


The Landslide

by Faylette



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alpha Yuri Plisetsky, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Explicit Sexual Content, Friends With Benefits, M/M, Marathon Sex, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Medical Conditions, Mpreg, Omega Otabek Altin, Omega Verse, POV Alternating
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-04-23
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-04-26 23:46:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 20,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14413080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Faylette/pseuds/Faylette
Summary: It was simple, really. Otabek had an issue. Yuri just happened to have the means to deal with it. Good friends help each other out, and Yuri wanted to be a good friend to his first real friend ever.Turns out that having sex with your friend can get more complicated than you expect. And it's about to get alotmore complicated.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> _Can I sail through the changing ocean tides?_  
>  Can I handle the seasons of my life?  
> Well, I've been afraid of changing  
> 'Cause I've built my life around you  
> But time makes you bolder, even children get older  
> And I’m getting older too...  
> — Fleetwood Mac, "Landslide"

The late afternoon sun rushes through the uniform slits of Otabek’s bedroom blinds, dyeing the room a warm orange, as the late afternoon brings the telltale noises of rush hour up to Otabek’s window: car engines roaring and sputtering by, horns honking, the occasional impatient shout over it all. August is on its way out in Almaty, but summer is still going strong. Last time Yuri checked, the temperature was in the high thirties, a good deal more degrees than it’d take to make Yuri sweat straight through his clothes doing absolutely nothing. It’s hot, so damn hot.

And he’s not even the one in heat.

Beneath him, Otabek is drenched in sweat, his face, chest and stomach all a rosy pink made shiny with moisture. He looks like he’s been through one hell of a training session, the kind that pushes you one step below dropping dead on the spot. Maybe that’s what this is, really — they’ve more or less kept hydrated, but snack breaks, against every recommendation you can find on omegas and their mates getting through a heat, have been largely ignored. Yuri can power through it, at least, with so much to distract him from his empty stomach. His eyes keep going back to the speckled droplets along the curves of Otabek’s upper lip, how they pool together in the divot above his mouth, glistening as his lips part to let out moans, as his head rolls against the pillow.

He looks beautiful. Even with the sometimes awkward ways his features scrunch up in his pleasure, he remains beautiful.

Yuri desperately wants to kiss him.

He can’t, but he can want to.

No, he shouldn’t even want to.

But he does.

Yuri forces himself to stare up at the bumpy drywall ceiling, thinking of how ugly it looks as the sound of his hips slapping sharply against Otabek’s skin fills the room, the sound building and building.

Otabek spills onto himself with a throaty cry, long past the point of trying to stifle the noise. He’s deep into his heat, far away from shame, self-consciousness. He is wild with need. He _is_ need. Needy enough that, as soon as Yuri pulls out, Otabek, his stomach still splattered and sticky, flips himself over, holding himself up on trembling hands and knees, unsated. Relieved a little, perhaps, but not yet sated.

He still _needs_.

And Yuri doesn’t have to keep him waiting. Yuri learned early on in this arrangement that letting himself come every time Otabek did, as tempting as it is and as right as it feels, was just bad strategy. Sure, it doesn’t take long at all for Yuri to get hard again, but those precious minutes of downtime seem like torturous hours for Otabek, lying there without a hot, stiff cock in him, genuinely suffering, filling Yuri with guilt for having to deny him, sending his mind reeling with arousal at how needy Otabek was for him, despite the guilt of it. But now, a little older and a little wiser, Yuri pushes back inside of Otabek, indulging in the moment when he’s sheathed in full, bracing himself while just the sensation of being stretched full is enough for Otabek.

Then it’s time to get back to work.

The sun’s long set by the time Otabek’s need starts to dwindle, his overpowering libido giving way for his senses to come back to him, his stores of energy finally giving out. When they do, at last, he reclines fully, his limbs dropped where they comfortably fall, his breathing turning from loud and frantic to rhythmically quiet, then to near-silence. Yuri, kneeling next to Otabek’s limp legs, can just make out the shape of him in the darkness, this beast of a body he’s finally been able to calm.

“How’re you feeling?” Yuri asks, feeling around for a water bottle that still has water in it. The gulps he takes are warm, but still heavenly for his throat after the calmer, but still uninterrupted home stretch they had there.

“Mm-hmm,” Otabek mumbles. Good, Yuri guesses. That’s good.

“You thirsty? Hungry?” Yuri looks at the bedside table, where the scant light illuminates the creases of foil wrappers full of granola and plastic bags packed with dried fruit, mostly untouched.

“Tired, mostly,” says Otabek, his voice scratchy. Awake enough that he can hear himself speak, apparently, he lazily takes a water bottle when Yuri bumps it against his hand.

“I’ll quit bugging you, then.” Yuri gets off the bed, walking over their clothes as he swipes some of the snacks. “Eat something, okay?”

“Thought you said you’d stop bugging me.”

Yuri rolls his eyes. “Fine. Starve, dumbass.”

“Mmkay,” Otabek yawns, sluggishly rolling over to his side. “Night.”

“Night,” Yuri echoes back, lingering in place for the length of a steadied breath. He steps out of the room, closing the door behind him with a decisive click, then drags his naked, sore, dead-tired body over to Otabek’s bathroom, heap of snacks clasped close to his chest.

As the tub fills with hot water, Yuri scarfs down two granola bars and several handfuls of dried fruit, the rush of carbohydrates bringing him back to life, somewhat. He needs an actual meal. So does Otabek. But that just isn’t happening right now. Hair pulled up, he plunges his body into the water, the heat at first scalding, before it quickly turns to soothing. For once, Yuri’s glad he’s hasn’t grown much taller in the past few years, because being able to fit in Otabek’s little bathtub is absolute heaven right now, especially for his back because _oh god_ does his lower back hurt after today. He feels like an old, frail man complaining about his aching back, even if it's only to himself. Except for the stretches when Otabek takes over and gives Yuri a break, fucking consists of a fairly fixed, excessively repetitive motion that relies on the strength of his core muscles. And Yuri's aren't weak by any measure — they literally _can't_ be with what he does — but it's harsh, almost literally backbreaking work when you practically have to use them from sunrise to sunset.

But Yuri tries not to beat himself up over it, as much as he feels like doing just that; he's heard it's not uncommon for even undeniably fit alphas to spend days pretty much bedridden after, as it's politely referred to, "helping" an omega through their heat. The intense, physically demanding nature of said "help" can leave them that wrecked. Yuri doesn’t have to deal with that, at least. Not since the first time, anyway. Back when he really had no idea how much “help” Otabek was going to need.

But, obviously, pain and exhaustion isn’t all Yuri gets to experience during Otabek’s heats. Far from it...

He splashes two handfuls of bathwater on his face. It’s tepid now, and his hands are beyond pruny by this point. Aware of these details, and with a reluctant huff, he pulls the plug and pulls himself out of the tub, drying himself off and putting on a clean t-shirt and pair of shorts, as the water swirls down the drain.

His muscles a fair deal less sore, though just as heavy with fatigue, he goes into the living room. There, before Yuri’s flight had even come in, Otabek had set the couch up with pillows and blankets. He offered Yuri the bed — he always does — but Yuri’s fine with this. Really.

He sleeps just as alone whether he takes Otabek up on it or not.

Setting the blankets aside because it’s still too damn hot to even be near a blanket right now, he slumps down onto the couch, settling on his side with one arm hanging over the edge.

He's more than prepared to just pass out for as many hours as his body wants and needs, but when his eyes wander behind the coffee table, to Otabek's shut bedroom door, he lingers in wakefulness a little longer. It's hard to sleep and think at the same time.

Back when Yuri started having sex with his best friend, back when he even just considered the possibility of it, he had somehow managed to convince himself that it was just helping out a friend. Like it wasn’t really any different from agreeing to help a friend move or pick them up when they’re stranded at the airport or something, the kind of stuff he imagines friends just _do_ for each other because they’re friends. It was simple, really. Otabek had an issue. Yuri just happened to have the means to deal with it. Good friends help each other out, and Yuri wanted to be a good friend to his first real friend _ever_. There were countless alpha and omega pairs that did this kind of thing without strings attached. It wasn’t going to change their friendship. It wasn’t going to make him want to be anything more than Otabek’s friend. It was just going to be sex. Back then, Yuri was absolutely certain of all of these things.

_Nice fucking work, idiot_ , thinks Yuri in the present, flipping over to face the inside of the couch.

 

* * *

 

**10 Simple Ways to Make an Omega’s Heat AMAZING**

 

If you, like 85% of the population, have never been in heat, it’s probably impossible to really get across to you what it’s like to have one. Although suppressants are widely available, the fact of the matter is that one in ten omegas don’t take suppressants, either for a medical reason or personal choice, and thus experience a heightened, sustained sexual desire for usually anywhere from 6 to 24 hours every month. A heat can be exciting and satisfying, but the perceived lack of control can be unnerving, even terrifying. If you’re an alpha or beta planning to spend a heat with an omega, there are a few easy things you can do to make your time spent together safer, easier, and even more fun!

  1. ******Talk ahead of time**



Discuss the omega’s expectations and boundaries, and your own, before their heat begins! Continued communication during the heat is important, of course, but omegas can express their likes, dislikes, and limits more easily when their minds are clear. Some topics to go over could include which sexual activities you’re both comfortable with, if fluid exchange is safe or desired, or if you’re planning on biting, marking, or knotting.

  1. **Stock up**



A good heat is 90% preparation, 10% perspiration. Get a good night’s sleep and maintain a balanced diet before the heat begins. Make sure you have an ample supply of calorie-dense, carbohydrate-rich foods for quick snacks (see suggestions here), water, and sports drinks. If you plan to use them, bring plenty of condoms. Always bring more than you think you’ll need (trust me). Lubricant is always a good idea, regardless of how much slick an omega produces. Keep a fresh set of bedding on hand to make longer heats more comfortable. Bring towels, cloths, tissues, and moist towelettes for quick and easy clean ups. And help to provide anything your omega needs — don’t think everything is their responsibility because they’re the one going in heat. You play a part too!

  1. **Pace yourselves**



[Read more...]

 

**Comments**

_anonymous: or you could just f.uck them that’s all their good for anyway_


	2. Chapter 2

Everything feels warm and right as Otabek slips from sleep to wakefulness, the process unhurried. He breathes in deeply, his senses alight with the scents that surround him. The sheets, his skin, even the air, it seems, is still heavy with the scent of sweat and sex, but heavier with the scent of an alpha, lingering pheromones for his brain to drown in. Right now, they tell him he’s safe, protected. treasured. It’s incomparably calming, almost sedative. It’s incredible that those same pheromones were what made it feel like every blood vessel in his body would jump right out of his skin if he hadn’t gotten pinned down and fucked _right that second._

Any biology textbook touching on the subject would show how it’s an example of evolution selecting out an advantageous trait, that the oddly pleasant wooziness that follows a heat encourages omegas to nuzzle up to their partners and form a deeper bond with them — the kind of bond that would help them stay together and invest their collective energy towards the survival of any offspring they had potentially whipped up the previous night.

It’s the kind of thing that would viciously remind him that his body has been finely tuned for breeding, and even this rather agreeable phenomenon is just another facet of that, but thankfully his stomach is growling far too loud to think of anything more complex than “Get. Food. Now.”

He barely has the wrapper off before he’s digging straight into one of the granola bars left by the bed. He doesn’t realize how dry his throat is until he tries, painfully, to swallow. He grabs the nearest bottle in his reach, a bright orange, half-full bottle of Gatorade. It’s lukewarm by this point, of course, but a few big glugs of it lets him wolf down the rest of the granola just as well anyway. No longer famished, but still hungry, he opens one of the baggies of dried fruit and works through its contents slowly, or tries to, at least. There's definitely some chewing now, just probably not enough. Biting into a sugary-sweet apricot with a chunk of pineapple stuck to it, he picks up his phone. It's past noon already, something he probably could have guessed from the intensity of the sunlight outside, but it's still a blow to see the actual numbers. He's been out cold for, what, twelve, thirteen hours? He's not even really sure when he fell asleep, so it's hard to figure out how much sleep he got. At least ten hours. Maybe.

Successfully overcoming the urge to stay in bed another minute, before that minute becomes another twelve hours because it's just so comfy, Otabek pulls his groggy self to his feet, spending a moment getting ahold of his balance on his tired, wobbly legs. The distance he puts between himself and the bed, as small as it is, is enough to make his senses come back to him, somewhat. He has enough of his senses, at least, to know that the state of things now is how they always are the morning (or afternoon) after. Namely, patches of the bed are drenched with bodily fluids, some his own, some not, some slightly moist, most dried up. His skin isn't in much a different state, either.

And just a moment ago what he wanted most in the world was to just lie there in a bed like this, with his body like this, not a care in the world. The thought makes him grimace.

On his way to the bathroom, he pauses as his eye becomes drawn to Yuri sprawled out on his couch, mouth hanging open, one leg over the armrest, the other tucked in, his torso twisted in a way that can't possibly be comfortable. No, scratch that — Yuri's flexible enough that it can't actually be ruled out that this _is_ comfortable for him. A pang of guilt for his friend's obviously inadequate sleeping arrangements keeps him there for a moment, like the reflection is some kind of penance. The realization that there’s a dribble of his friend’s semen on the inside of his thigh, however, makes him march straight to his shower.

There, beneath a blisteringly-hot stream of water, he washes himself clean. On the outside, thoroughly. On the inside, as much as he really can. He reminds himself that there are studies that show that some component or other of alpha semen reduces the duration of omegas’ heats when... taken internally, as it were. It’s a more than favourable trade-off, just messy to deal with. Less messy overall, possibly. Maybe there’s a study on _that_ somewhere.

When he’s done, he opens up his medicine cabinet and pulls out a daily dose of his lifeline, the little bottles and boxes adorned with a pharmacy printout sticker with O. Altin on it, the things that should, in theory, bring normalcy and control to his life. In practice, the results aren’t that astounding.

He throws the first pill into his mouth, a pheromone disruptor, so his passive scent doesn’t tip off anyone who gets too close by, and thus he can pass as a beta in his everyday life. Then, he pops his contraceptive out of its blister pack, a pill so tiny it could fit comfortably on top of a pencil eraser, but capable of rendering all those evolutionary advantages to his fertility, completely and thankfully null. A miraculous little invention, really, especially because it does its damn job. Then, with a resigned sigh, he opens a bottle and takes one of his many stockpiled disposable syringes out of its packaging, fills the syringe up to the right line, leans over the sink, lines the needle up behind him, and synchronizes a deep breath with jabbing it into his buttock. The sharp pinch makes him cringe, but it’s over in a second, and the tenderness will dwindle away within a few minutes, ten at the most.

He’s never liked needles, but he doesn’t have the luxury of being picky anymore — he’s already blown through all the pill options that his doctor could offer. He’s been through at least ten different heat suppressants in the past three years, ever since the one that’d been working reliably since he was thirteen just, out of the blue, didn’t work anymore. Based on the events of yesterday, this one seems like another one for the reject pile, but he’s supposed to take it for three months to give it a chance to take effect.

His expectations are strikingly low at this point. But, beneath that, he hopes this will be the one to exceed them. Finally.

 

* * *

 

**[Excerpt from a pamphlet titled “OMEGAS, YOU ARE BEING DECEIVED — Birth Control and Suppressants: ABOMINATIONS Against God’s Design”, discarded in a bus stop trashcan 10 seconds after being handed out]**

 

_To the omega he said, “I will make your pains in childbearing very severe; with painful labour you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your alpha, who will rule over you.”_ GENESIS 3:16 (NIV)

 

GOD bade all humankind to be FRUITUL and assert HIS dominion over the Earth, and He explicitly and UNDENIABLY designed the omega to be the IDEAL vessel for His DIVINE PURPOSE. But the modern, wicked world has DECEIVED the omega away from their God-given purpose, and given them WICKED tools to lead them astray from GOD’S will. The DEVIL put the evil ideas of birth control, abortifacients, and hormonal suppressants into the weak minds of his PHARMACEUTICAL PAWNS who create and dispense them. These affronts against GOD trick the omega into believing sex outside of a mating bond and holy matrimony has no CONSEQUENCES. They are WRONG. The consequences are CHILDLESSNESS, GRIEF, and ETERNAL HELLFIRE.

Gentle, nurturing omega, turn away from earthly LIES and DESIRES. Turn away from promiscuity and debauchery and SIN. Seek a godly alpha to be your SOLE bondmate, as Eve was to Adam, and serve them as you would serve GOD. Bear them children, and find JOY in your TRUE purpose...

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> People who left comments and/or kudos, you are all so hecking sweet. I love you all so much I'm going to try to update this every Monday. <3
> 
> So, please leave a comment to tell me what you thought! I'm also curious what you guys think of the little world-building asides. Weirdly, I had fun writing this one — I think I have a future in writing fundamentalist fire and brimstone tracts.
> 
> My lovely beta's response to the pamphlet is "dont worry bro this is an mpreg fic fay got u covered my dude." This is correct. Don't you all worry your little heads. It'll take some time, but there's an Otababy in the works. <3
> 
> Pharmaceutical Pawns is totally the name of my new band, btw.


	3. Chapter 3

Once they’re both awake, aware, and more or less alive, still running on just snacks, Yuri and Otabek drift over to their usual post-heat haunt, a nearby bakery/all-day breakfast joint where they end up when neither of them feels like preparing a substantial recovery meal. Which happens to be every time, but who’s keeping track? Otabek takes one of the joint’s healthier options, an omelette loaded with spinach and mushrooms, salmon on whole grain toast, and a bowl of fresh fruit salad, a nice change from dry fruit, probably. Still a little too tired to think for himself, Yuri orders the same thing, just swapping out the fruit for a blueberry milkshake, which arrives with a mountain of whipped cream and blueberries (hey, it still has fruit) rising like Olympus from the trendy mason jar it comes in. His coaches are a few thousand kilometres too far away to be able to badger him about how many fatty, sweet, delicious calories are stuffed into that mason jar, and Otabek, usually the champion for the cause of a balanced diet, only comments on the choice by offering to pay for it. Yuri drinks it without guilt. He's definitely earned this. Well, he's apparently earned this because of sex, he thinks to himself, so does that make him a prostitute who works for milkshakes?

Yeah, he's just going to stop this train of thought here.

He's sitting on Otabek's couch now, scrolling mindlessly through Twitter and trying to ignore the stomachache that cropped up mysteriously after they'd finished their breakfast. Otabek’s in the other room, loading up the washing machine with all the sheets and miscellaneous linens they went through, to put it politely, yesterday. Yuri had offered his help, then didn’t press the issue when Otabek declined. He knows that Otabek wants to keep his dirty laundry, both in a idiomatic sense and a there’s-really-actual-dirty-laundry sense, to himself.

A few beeps, a gush of running water, and the beginnings of a somewhat rhythmic mechanical churning later, Otabek joins him on the couch as Yuri’s looking at a selfie Mila just shared, one where she’s hugging Potya with her free arm and Potya clearly wants none of it.

_me [3:35]: leave my cat alone, baba_

As he sends off the text, Otabek pulls out his own phone and says, “We should book the next one.”

“Yeah,” says Yuri, keeping his tone in some nebulous zone between casual and business-like, whatever’s supposed to be most appropriate for this, “sure.”

He gets a curt nod in return, exceptionally business-like, and Otabek taps away for a moment at the app he uses to keep track of this kind of stuff. “My next heat should be,” he pauses, tilting the screen towards Yuri, “around here.”

It’s a calendar for September, part of its last week lit up with reds of varying intensity. Danger, it seems to say. Tread carefully. Be prepared.

Yuri has learned a lot about heats in the last year or so, as a necessity, in a sort of crisscrossed blend of independent study, one-on-one tutoring, and on-the-job training. One of the big things he’s learned is how malleable omegas’ heats actually are. They have a few days where they’re in a receptive state, where having an alpha in close proximity can generally trigger the full-blown heat before it just happens on its own. It’s apparently the omega body’s way of speeding things up so it can take advantage of an alpha (or, as Yuri has uneasily considered it, to be taken advantage of by an alpha) when there’s definitely one in the vicinity. Anyway, it’s an old trick they’re putting into play here: have the omega get real up close and personal with an alpha on the most convenient day out of the lot, roll around in bed until the heat’s over, then rest up and get back to your regular day-by-day. It’s how workers go into heat on the weekends instead of using their sick days, how parents go into heat when they have someone to foist the kids off to, how Otabek avoided going into heat at any of his competitions last season.

The exhaustion disrupts his training, making him stress his body to exhaustion just to make up for the lost time, but so long as he can make it to his competitions, Otabek seems happy. That makes Yuri happy, really.

He just doesn’t know if it’s enough anymore, for either of them. Mostly himself, though. Maybe entirely himself. He likes to think that maybe Otabek feels something similar for him, and not just because that would help make this turn into what Yuri wants it to turn into, but also to make him feel better about this sensitive agreement that he’s been entrusted with and is _totally_ blowing with his goddamn stupid feelings.

It was just supposed to be sex. Clearly defined limits. Nothing messy, except the sheets.

“I should pay for the tickets this time,” Yuri insists when they’re set on that Friday night, scrambling through his phone before Otabek beats him to the punch.

“Already did,” Otabek says calmly, holding up his screen with the flight booking on it.

“How the hell did you already—” Yuri gets cut off by his phone buzzing to notify him of an email, a confirmation from the airline and a confirmation that Otabek must have just done some crazy time warping bullshit to get a booking for that fast. “Jesus, Beka. I _am_ paying for the next one, okay!?”

He doesn’t quite catch the expression Otabek makes in response, distracted by the text he just got. It has another of Mila’s selfies, this one with her pressing a duck-faced kiss on Potya’s furry cheek.

_baba [3:44]: but he loves spending time with me <3_

_baba [3:44]: speaking of_

_baba [3:45] are you having a nice time with your bf? <3 <3 <3_

Yuri exhales slow through his nose, keeping his face neutral, as if he’s just reading a statement from his mobile carrier, not from someone who doesn’t even know how aggravating she’s being, even though being aggravating is her one and only goal with him. That just makes it _more_ aggravating.

_me [3:45]: he’s not my boyfriend baba fuck off_

_baba [3:45]: yeah_

_baba [3:46]: suuure_

_baba [3:46]: [eggplant] [hand pointing right] [OK hand]_

_baba [3:46]: [hot dog] [hole] [sweat droplets]_

_baba [3:46]: [baguette] [kiss mark] [party popper]_

_baba: [3:47]: [eggplant] [eggplant]_

_baba: [3:47]: [eggplant] [eggplant]_

_baba: [3:47]: [eggplant] [eggplant]_

_baba: [3:47]: [eggplant] [eggplant]_

Yuri, tempted to throw his phone across the room, instead closes the messaging app and turns off all notifications.

“What was all that about?” asks Otabek.

“Just Victor,” Yuri replies quickly, “just, you know... screaming about how much he loves his husband, being gross, the usual.”

Otabek nods knowingly. He’s just indirectly acquainted with Victor and even he’s been on the receiving end of some of Victor’s drunk, mushy, sometimes not-child-safe text chain spams.

“So,” Yuri digresses, eager to move away from both the real texts and the ones he made up, “what part of Almaty are you gonna show me today?”

Otabek smiles, and there’s almost actual _mischief_ in the look.

“I was thinking all of it.”

 

* * *

 

 

**FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE**

**Renowned figure skater Otabek Altin to host state-sponsored tourism campaign**

  
[photo: Otabek Altin at the 2016 Four Continents Championships, with gold medal, holding up flag of Kazakhstan]

**Astana (August 2017)** As part of the Kazakh Government's "Tourism Industry Development Plan 2020", an effort to increase tourism revenues to 3% of Kazakhstan's GDP by 2020, Otabek Altin will participate in a campaign to encourage foreign travellers to pick Kazakhstan as their next vacation destination.

The campaign will consist of a series of videos featuring natural sights, historical landmarks, recreational resorts, and glimpses into Kazakh culture.

Otabek Altin, one of a handful of Kazakhs recognized by an international audience, will star in these videos, taking viewers on a virtual journey of Kazakhstan's exceptional sights and enticing them to visit and make that journey a reality.

The series will also advertise the investments made in the industry since the start of the program, including relaxed visa laws, improvements in amenities and transportation, and ecological conservation.

Production is set to start Summer 2018.

 

* * *

 

"This is so fucking cool,” Yuri says, still open-mouthed, as he holds his phone up to get a shot of the lights of urban Almaty from above.

“Yeah,” says Otabek, voice tinged with pride. “It is.”

They’re at top of Kok-Tobe, a mountain skirting the city limits of Almaty, laying out the whole of the city for anyone atop it. In Otabek’s lifetime, they’ve built it up into a park, with art instalments, trails, playgrounds, food stands and restaurants, a bird sanctuary, a Beatles monument, oddly enough, and even a few amusement park rides. He knows it’s become kind of a tourist trap but, even so, he can’t help loving this little piece of his hometown, always bustling with people, Almaty natives or not. But his favourite part has always been, and still is, this view of the city he loves.

It warms him to see his friend enjoy it too.

“My family brought me here for a picnic when the cable car opened,” Otabek starts to say, finding his idle reminiscing being given a voice without much intent on his part. When Yuri turns to give him his attention, he figures he might as well continue. “They bought me ice cream after the trip up because I was so terrified.”

He still has very fond memories of that day, despite nearly pissing his pants in fear. That probably speaks volumes about what a great time he had with his moms afterwards.

“Oh my god,” Yuri laughs, his brow scrunched up in pity and amusement together. “How old were you?”

“Seven, I think?” Otabek pauses. Sounds right to him. “It was really shaky. Or I thought it was, at least.”

“Were you scared today?” Yuri teases, spurring a laugh, but no words, out of Otabek. “It’s okay, it’s okay, I won’t tell anyone the Hero of Kazakhstan’s freaked out by heights.”

There are worse things the public could find out about.

“Maybe a little,” he admits. “It _is_ actually shaky, you know.”

Yuri yields with a shrug and a small nod, which Otabek knows to take as a genuinely sympathetic reaction to an embarrassing story. Then Yuri’s eyes light up at a row of mounted binoculars nearby. He points and asks, “Can we see your apartment from here?”

“My apartment’s in Almaty, isn’t it?”

Yuri groans. “Come on, then.” He grabs Otabek by the forearm and pulls him over to the binoculars. When he sees that they’re coin-operated, he starts digging through his jean pockets. Otabek is quick to find a 100 tenge coin in his wallet, sliding it into the slot and looking through the viewfinder to start his search. It’s dark, but Almaty glitters with lights at night, so he has no trouble navigating through the neighbourhoods and landmarks that Otabek knows like the back of his hand.

“There it is,” he says when he finds his building, not taking that long to find it. He means to move away and let Yuri take over the binoculars where they’re now pointed, but the magnification’s good enough that he can make out the windows and, as his apartment faces south, find his own piece of the building by counting up the right number of floors. He might not have been able to discern what the off-white thing in the window was, but he knows enough to reason them to be the blinds on his bedroom window.

He feels a warmth grow in his face, spreading quick to his ears as a flash of what happened behind those blinds just yesterday appears in his head. What he did. What he _was_.

“C’mon, lemme see already.” Otabek feels his shoulder get shoved, not with enough force to move him, but enough to bring him back to the present.

Yuri is quick to take up the spot as soon as Otabek moves. He makes a quick noise of surprise when he looks. "Hey, that _is_ it, huh?”

Then, right after his confirmation, Yuri starts swivelling the binoculars from side to side, scanning over the city. Otabek can’t blame him; Almaty is a sight to behold, especially from up here, where so many facets of it can intersect in an instant. Its rising towers and quaint little houses, its mosques and Orthodox cathedrals, malls and parks, so many places he wants to take Yuri to.

It’s a shame that his opportunities to show off the city he loves to the friend he cares for always have to be wrapped around Otabek’s heat cycle instead of just being, well, something friends do when they get together.

He’s grateful, really. Extremely grateful, and he knows he should be. Not every omega’s lucky enough to have a friend who cuts time out of their busy schedule every month, flies five hours from St. Petersburg to Almaty, and stresses their body to its limits, just to assuage and cut short a friend’s ache. Well, _most_ omegas have suppressants that actually work, so a friend that wonderful isn’t at all necessary. But, aside from all that, Otabek knows he’s lucky to have a friend who’s so good to him. He owes him a lot for dragging him along with his own problems. He owes a lot that he doesn’t know how to repay.

The Almaty outings probably aren’t enough to make up for the favour.

“Your coin ran out,” says Yuri, stepping away from the binoculars. He looks at Otabek expectantly. “Where are you taking me next?”

“You hungry?”

“Not really?” Yuri shrugs. “Not yet.”

“Okay.” Otabek thinks for a second, running through the fuzzy, malleable plan he had for the evening in his head. “How about the raptor sanctuary?”

Yuri opens his mouth, closing it back up without saying anything, his eyes narrow with skepticism. “Otabek,” he begins apprehensively, “you don’t have goddamn _dinosaurs_ in Kazakhstan, do you?”

“Just their descendants,” explains Otabek, staying his usual stone-faced self for the sake of Yuri’s feelings. “Hawks, falcons, golden eagles — like the one on the Kazakhstan flag, actually.”

Yuri snorts into the back of his hand. “You can’t stop being patriotic for, like, five minutes, huh?”

Otabek just shrugs. Not like he can deny it.

“But, I like that about you. It’s cool, I mean, how much you care about this stuff,” Yuri adds, stumbling over the words in his rush to get them out. “I, uh, didn’t mean to sound like an asshole or anything.”

“I know,” Otabek assures him, smiling.

Yuri smiles back, his expression softer and brighter than what almost anyone else gets to see, if only for an instant, as it is now. He clears his throat and looks to the side for a moment, the smile still there when he faces Otabek again, but not nearly as soft, not as bright.

“C’mon, let’s go then,” he says, looking around. “Which way?”

Without having to consult anything, Otabek walks confidently ahead. Yuri follows at his side.

“And, on the way,” says Otabek, “I can tell you all kinds of fun facts about Kazakhstan.”

“Oh god,” Yuri laughs, punching Otabek’s arm. “Don’t push it.”

Otabek rubs the sore spot, or at least where there _should_ have been a sore spot. Unlike most people on the receiving end of Yuri’s punches and kicks, his assaults on Otabek are more like a mother cat play-fighting with its kittens.

“I thought you liked it.”

“Yeah, to a _point_ ,” Yuri clarifies, with plenty of emphasis.

“Did you know,” Otabek pauses, giving a second for Yuri’s exaggerated groan, “Lake Balkhash is one of the largest lakes in Asia, and the fifteenth largest in the world?”

“Is this going to be on the test?”

“And, oddly enough,” Otabek goes on without a hitch, “its western half is fresh water, but the east is salty. Fascinating, isn’t it?”

“Otabek, I fucking swear,” Yuri hisses from between his gritted teeth, his face mostly covered with his hands, fingers parted so he can still see where he’s going. “If you keep this up, I’m pushing you off this mountain.”

“Well, at least we’re not on Khan Tengri, then,” Otabek says with a shrug, casually slipping his hands into his jacket pockets. “Kazakhstan’s tallest mountain. Part of the Tian Shan range, on the Kazakhstan-Kyrgyzstan-China border.”

“Okay, forget the mountain, I’m shoving you in a locker.”

Otabek laughs, and manages to make it all the way to the raptor sanctuary without either getting pushed to his death or shoved into a locker (and there actually _were_ lockers to be found). Again, Yuri is a good friend. Really. His belligerence is actually pretty endearing, if you know he tolerates you enough to not actually mean you any harm.

And Yuri seems to completely forgive the fun fact deluge once they’re actually in the sanctuary, where Yuri has more than enough intimidating-looking birds to pose with for selfies. Enough, in fact, that they spend way more time at the sanctuary than Otabek thought they would, up until the light of day is completely gone, and all the guests, the two included, are shuffled out at closing time. Otabek doesn’t mind much, really. Yuri clearly had a good time, and an overloaded photo roll to prove it.

Now, they’re eating skewers of lamb shashlik Otabek bought almost immediately after leaving the sanctuary, after Yuri caught a whiff from a nearby food stall and his stomach loudly declared, to both of them, that he was, in fact, hungry now. Sitting together on a low concrete ledge, taking careful bites from the piping hot skewer, Otabek watches Yuri thumb through the photos he just took, trying to find the most Instagram-worthy one in the set. He ends up picking the one of both of them in front of a golden eagle, her immense wings still looking immense even partially outstretched, and floods the caption with little Kazakh flags. It makes Otabek smile in spite of, or maybe just because, it’s a small, furtive dig at him, the kind only he would understand is a dig at him in the first place.

Once that’s dealt with, and the grease is wiped away from their lips, they head back to the cable car, ready to head back to Otabek’s place to rest up and prepare before Yuri’s flight back to St. Petersburg in the morning. Mid-stride, Yuri stops in place.

“Hey.” Yuri points over at the square, at group of people, a family, probably, tossing coins into a fountain familiar to Otabek. It’s shaped like an apple. “Almaty. City of apples. I got it.”

“You remembered,” Otabek remarks, a drop of genuine pride leaking into his voice.

“I mean, you’ve probably told me that like ten times. I had to retain it eventually.”

Once the family scurries away, Yuri walks toward the fountain, searching through his pockets and successfully retrieving the coin he couldn’t find earlier, as Otabek follows him over without question.

“Make a wish with me,” says Yuri. “It’s lame if I just do it myself.”

It’s a good enough of a reason for Otabek. He pulls out some of the change he got from the shashlik, taking one coin from the bunch before shoving the rest inside his pocket.

“I wish,” Yuri pauses, clutching his coin between both hands as his expression goes serious with thought, “to win gold at the GPF, and at Pyeongchang, and beat my old score.” With that, he tosses the coin into the fountain, the sudden plunk of the metal breaking the surface standing out against the steady stream of water out of the granite apple's stem.

"I think you only get one wish per coin,” Otabek explains, reasonably sure of himself. “And it won’t come true if you tell anyone.”

“You could have _told_ me that before,” Yuri sighs heavily, arms crossed. “Well, whatever. Not like a wish would change anything. That stuff’s all on me.”

“Right.” Otabek nods in agreement. They both know well enough that their performances on the competition rink depends entirely on the time they spent on their home rinks. It’s impossible for every aspect of their success to be in their control, but, really, so much of it is, and so simply. He breathes in as he looks at the coin between his fingers, letting the air out of his lungs, the coin out of his hand, and his wish into words, keeping them in his mind.

_I just want a season where I don’t sabotage myself_ , he thinks, his chest heavy with the thought. _Please._

He’ll take anything. A suppressant that actually works. A heat schedule that doesn’t conflict with any competitions or bog down his training. Suddenly, magically, one day waking up as a beta or an alpha, into a body that wouldn’t, _couldn’t_ control him like this.

He might as well wish big, he figures. It’s not like it will change anything.

“What’d you wish for?” asks Yuri.

Otabek manages a soft laugh as he turns to his prying friend, “Already told you. It won’t come true if I tell you.”

It’s worth a shot, at least.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A slightly longer chapter for this week! Thank you for reading, and I hope you enjoyed. :)
> 
> Remember to leave a comment if you're looking forward to more, because nothing motivates more me to keep working than your kind words. <3


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw: brief reference to suicide. Skip the first section, before the line, if you want to avoid it.

**Omegas, what was your first heat like? Very first one, first full-blown one, whatever — just share your story!**

 

*** It hurt so f***ing bad I thought I was dying. I went to the school nurse and told her my appendix burst because it was the only thing I could think of. No one had EVER told me ANYTHING about heats. My parents couldn’t have just brought it up when I was younger!? I was just so mad that this s**t doesn’t get taught. (But it might be different nowadays?)

*** Can’t speak for everywhere, but it was covered in my sex ed class when I was 12.

*** Good to hear. Nobody should be in the dark about this.

 

*** I got really dizzy and puked on a boy I liked. We’re getting married in July.

 

*** Happened when I was 13 at my best friend’s sleepover. I felt really nauseous and like... itchy all over? idk I still don’t have a better way to describe how heats feel. Anyway, her mom called my mom to take me home. I wasn’t allowed to go over to her house anymore after that.

*** What an ignorant woman! I’m so sorry you went through that!

*** Whatever. I’m over it. Thanks though.

 

*** Okay, at some point I must have got something REALLY mixed up because I thought going into heat meant I was going to have a baby. Not that I was able to. That I was DEFINITELY 100% PREGNANT. I was just like omg how did this happen I haven’t even had my first kiss and now my parents are gonna kill me.

 

*** It was the worst day of my life, and not because of the pain and nausea and all that. I can handle pain. I couldn’t handle how EVERYONE started treating me differently. All my friends, everyone at school, started avoiding me. Like all I wanted to do was f***. Like all I wanted to do was f*** THEM. Like I was just some crazed f***ing sex monster. Even my parents started treated me differently. They used to kinda let me do whatever I wanted, cuz I never really wanted to do crazy stuff in the first place, but after they found out I was an omega they demanded to always know where I was and where I was going and exactly who I was with and I needed to text them like every 30 minutes to let them know what I was doing or I’d get grounded for weeks. I knew they were afraid I’d be out screwing strangers and I’d come home knocked up, they weren’t even f***ing subtle about it. F*** heats. F*** being an omega. If I didn’t have working suppressants, I’d have offed myself ages ago.

 

* * *

 

The first time Otabek’s body betrayed him, he was barely thirteen years old. But the story didn’t start with that.

It was the best news he could have possibly received for his birthday. Even though his birthday was still a couple weeks away, the events quickly became interlinked in his mind, and so he saw it as an early gift. When Vera came to pick him up from the ice rink to take him to school, as usual, there were a couple things that stood out as unusual to him. For one, Vera and Gulmira, both of his mothers, were there, and both of them, instead of giving the horn a quick honk and waiting in the car for Otabek to hop in, rushed out and rushed towards him, the way he’s seen excited fans mob an adored musician (somewhat fitting, as they were definitely his two biggest fans). Before he could say anything, he was swept up in a fierce pincer attack of a hug that thankfully none of his rinkmates were around to see.

“You got in!” Gulmira practically squealed, squeezing her son somehow even tighter in her excitement.

Otabek’s heart skipped a beat in shock. Or maybe his circulation was just getting cut off. “I did?”

“Junior Nationals,” Vera explained, leaving no room for ambiguity. Her excitement was more subtle, especially next to her high-energy wife, but it was still obvious to Otabek.

It took him a moment to actually process it, Gulmira literally bouncing as he did, but when it really hit — _I’m skating at Nationals —_ he grinned his widest grin possible, an expression that was pretty stuck on his face for hours straight afterwards, even when he talked, even with the braces he’d gotten that summer and still tried to hide most of the time. It was the most ecstatic he’d ever been in his life, and although he was exhausted from giving his all at practice before the sun was even up, he joined Gulmira in her bouncing, dragging a not-too-unwilling Vera into their family’s impression of popcorn popping.

“We need to celebrate!” announced Gulmira. “Let’s go get breakfast! Habibi,” she said to Otabek, “where do you want to eat? We’ll go wherever you want.”

“Anywhere’s good!” he said gleefully He could go to the worst restaurant in all of Almaty and still be as ecstatic as he was in this parking lot. “You pick!”

“Oh, but _you_ have to pick, Bekam. _You’re_ the one who’s going to Nationals!”

_I am. I really am._

“Wait, wait,” Vera cut in. “This is big, but it’s a school day.”

“Oh, come on, he’s earned a day off,” said Gulmira, pressing her cheek against Otabek’s, a feat easily accomplished by her short stature. “Hasn’t he? Because we’re so, so proud of him?”

Otabek couldn’t see it, but he knew she was using her patented puppy dog eyes on Vera, because he could see her starting to break.

“You got any tests today?” Vera asked, clearly already broken down but still trying to whip out her authority, to at least make it seem like she put up a fight as the responsible parent.

He shook his head.

“Assignments to hand in?”

“Nope.”

“And you have someone to bring you what you’ve missed?”

“Uh-huh.”

She paused, staying quiet for a moment. Gulmira waited with bated breath, squishing Otabek closer, much more on edge for Vera’s response than Otabek himself. He was way more hyped up for what she wanted to celebrate for, rather than any celebration itself.

Finally, Vera sighed. “All right, I guess one day won’t hurt.” While Gulmira let out an enthusiastic whoop, she warmly added, “But only if you pick the place. So, where to, future Junior Nationals champion?”

He can’t remember what restaurant he picked or what he ate, but he does remember that Gulmira brought entirely too much pep into the place so early in the morning, when the majority of its current clientele were drowsy people guzzling down caffeine before their workdays. She didn’t miss a chance to tell an employee that her son was going to skate in the Nationals, never losing an ounce of her enthusiasm despite the usually polite but mostly disinterested responses. Vera, on the other hand, focused on the more practical matters at hand, like how much time he could reasonably commit to his training schedule from now on and the kinds of things he should be eating. But that didn’t stop her from ruffling up his hair or kissing his cheek and saying “I’m so proud of you” in between her well-meaning and legitimately appreciated planning.

The weeks that followed were a back-to-back repetition of practice, school, practice, schoolwork, sleep, with him practically moving into the rink on weekends. His coach joked that he should have just brought a tent on Friday nights and set up camp. At the time, it actually sounded like a good idea; just think of all the time commuting that could have been spent skating! As the competition loomed closer, even Vera, such a stickler for the importance of her son’s education, allowed him to slack off in favour of polishing out the rough edges in his free skate program. His improvement was significant and tangible, to his parents and his coaches and even himself; instead of being nervous about competing, he was nothing but motivated, driven to push himself past his limits and perform at his very best. On the morning of the short program, he was confidence incarnate.

Otabek had never felt more in control of his body.

 

His practice before the short program went off without a hitch, each rehearsed jump executed as well as on his home rink, each spin tight and controlled. He blocked out the other competitors practising around him, focusing entirely on himself, hearing in his head the song he could have probably recreated note by note in his sleep by that point. When the practice ended, his coach offered his skate guards, a firm pat on the back, and a confirmation of what Otabek already felt in his gut: keep that up, and by tomorrow he'd have a medal.

He couldn't say he wasn't happy just to be here, that it was an incredible pride just having a chance at being Kazakhstan's champion, in some way. But, now that he had that chance, just having it wasn't enough. He knew he could get gold, and he was going to fight for it.

But he had to wait a bit longer to start that fight. He ended up second to last in the drawing, leaving him with a lot of time to wait with no real opportunity to prepare. But he was still confident in his upcoming performance. He focused on that, instead of the tight ache that had suddenly shown up low in his abdomen. It was more of a nagging pain than something that actually hurt, but it was still a distraction, and until he had finished his short program, he wasn’t going to give his attention to anything short of apocalyptic, much less a little stomach ache.

He kept himself busy as the competition began and marched on, alternating between sitting in the stands with his coach and parents, walking around, stretching, all with his earbuds firmly in his ears, his short program music on repeat, but still that odd pain, like a pinch under his skin, persisted. And, still, he tried to ignore it. His little group wasn’t oblivious to his restlessness.

“Hey, Otabek,” Vera patted his arm as he slumped down beside her, prompting him to take out his earbuds. They were between competitors, so it wasn’t too loud, but she still leaned close to ask, “How’s it going?”

“Fine,” he said quickly. Even he could tell it was too quickly.

She raised an eyebrow, half motherly concern, half math-teacher-who’s-heard-thousands-of-lies skepticism.

“Really,” he insisted, grabbing a water bottle to try and get that sticky, thick feeling out of his throat. He hoped having the bottle in front of his face hid the grimace he made as a cramp momentarily seared his insides, before passing.

“Okay,” Vera said evenly, though she obviously wasn’t convinced. She never forced to Otabek to talk about anything he didn’t want to (neither did Gulmira, either, but he hated causing _that_ worried face of hers so much that he usually just guilted himself into talking). Anyway, she probably just thought he was going through a bad case of nerves during his national debut. It’s what Otabek assumed at the time too, at least subconsciously.

So, instead of saying anything more, she put a firm hand on her son’s fidgeting hand. He felt a rush of embarrassment, a 13-year-old boy holding his mom’s hand in public, but he didn’t let go until his coach came to lead him down to the ice.

When his name was called over the speakers, he glided over to the centre of the rink, glancing over quickly to his parents, over near the barrier now. Without his knowledge, they had brought a blue banner in with them that they had written “Davai Otabek Altin” on, the Altin written in a glittery gold paint. The banner had a mom holding it on either side, their disparate heights tilting it at a slight angle. When Gulmira noticed that Otabek noticed, she threw up her free arm, waving vigorously and screaming “We love you!” before pointing at the banner. Some high-level and highly visible parental embarrassment, but Otabek couldn’t help but smile at it, before the words on the cloth started to go blurry. He squeezed his eyes shut, tried to breathe deeply, and looked again, saw clearly.

Then he moved into his starting position, and waited for the music.

Deep breath. Deep breath.

When the music began, its opening percussion now as much a part of him as his own heartbeat, his body moved almost on its own, propelled into a step sequence that grew jauntier as the song did. It felt like he was being pulled by strings across the ice, into spins and jumps that he landed just as well as his best practice runs. As strangely out of control of his body as he felt then, there was pure exhilaration running through his veins as he knew his nerves had given way to this, to what he _knew_ how to do. This was the sport he loved. This was _his_ sport.

The burst of physical pain in his abdomen was just a sliver of the complete pain he felt as his body hit the ice, the blindingly tight cramp wrecking his landing out of the combination jump he must have practiced hundreds and hundreds of times. It was a spectacular failure, he knew.

He stumbled back up to his feet, trying to nimbly shrug off the fall like it hadn’t even happened, even as every muscle in his body was now rigid with the panic. He returned to his program, trying to sync his movements back up to the rhythm of the song, but it just wasn’t working. Nothing was working. His jumps were sloppy, his landings unsteady, if they even landed on his feet at all, his spins slow and floundering. Triples turned into doubles, doubles into singles.

When it was over, he was gasping for air harder than he ever had in his life, the unsteady applause of the crowd dull in his ears. He heard his name, its syllables muddy but recognizable. His head turned to the side, to his mothers only cheering for him louder, holding their banner up higher. His last name glittered and shone as it waved between them. His eyes went out of focus. He doubled over and heaved his breakfast up on the ice.

After a visit with the first aid team on site, nerves were pinned as the culprit once more, and Otabek returned home, the pain and dizziness coming to him in waves throughout the evening and well into the night. He vomited again, more than once, leaving his throat raw and his body drained to exhaustion. He had gone hours without even trying to eat, knowing he couldn’t keep anything down. He just kept trying to sleep. He needed his rest for tomorrow, to even have a chance at making up for his shortcomings in the short program.

He didn’t get that chance. He didn’t show up for the free skate.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Did you think I was gonna advance the plot? NOPE. Time for tragic backstory and family background!
> 
> Thanks again for the comments, they're all so sweet. <3 Let me know what you thought of this chapter too! :)


	5. Chapter 5

As much as he would have rather just stayed at home and kept himself hidden in bed, he eventually acquiesced to his mothers’ concerns and let them take him to the doctor. His family physician, Dr. Bayzhanov, after being made aware of the situation, moved quickly from mindless pleasantries to a host of invasive questions, things that made Otabek feel vulnerable and want even more to just be beneath his covers. With a grave look plastered on his face like a mask, Dr. Bayzhanov examined his body, had him pee in a cup, drew his blood. Even then, with the phobia he’s had of needles since his childhood vaccinations, Otabek didn’t so much as wince when that needle went under his skin. It seemed, by this point, that he was as numb physically as he was in his head.

After all this, he was shuffled back into the waiting room and was told he’d be called back in when the doctor had a diagnosis ready, that it’d maybe take a couple hours, at least. He sat without getting up, for the entire wait, on a soft but not comfortable chair, passively accepting his mothers’ shoulders as they were offered to him, finding little reprieve from the tense knots in his stomach as they held him close and gingerly rubbed his arm.

He neither wanted the moment to be delayed nor for it to come. He was in a limbo, just wanting none of this. Even so, eventually he was called back to the examination room. He took his parents along with him. In his gut, he knew that this, whatever it was, was something he wasn’t going to be able to face alone.

“You’re an omega,” said Dr. Bayzhanov, forgoing any pretense or embellishment. “What you experienced was an immature heat.” The words sounded far away, but still unmistakably directed at him. “Nausea, dizziness, and lower abdominal cramping are common reactions to the hormonal fluctuations that your body is undergoing. These symptoms will occur sporadically for about a year or so, before you start producing pheromones and having regular heats where pregnancy is possible. Now...”

His words started to sound far away, drowned out by a buzzing in Otabek’s ears, droning louder and louder. He kept talking and talking, explaining things that Otabek’s brain was rejecting the explanations to, his overwhelmed mind clawing at something stable to hold onto, something that made sense, something that _meant_ something to him.

“Can I skate?” Otabek interrupted, unable to keep the question in anymore. “Can I still skate?”

“Of course you can,” Vera assured him. “It’s not a disease. You’re not sick.”

“True, it’s not a disease. However”— that word hit Otabek straight in the gut, harder than anything his body’s done to itself in since yesterday — ”there’s good reason that there are so few professional omega athletes. Lower muscle mass, weaker bones, and, of course, heats can be disruptive even in everyday life.”

Maybe this was all a bad dream. Just a nightmare. Any second now and he’d wake up in his own bed, ready to hit the rink for morning practice, everything normal, normal, _normal._

“What about suppressants?” asked Gulmira. “Then he wouldn’t have heats, right?”

Dr. Bayzhanov exhaled heavily through his nose, looking exhausted, maybe even a little annoyed. **“** It’s unfortunate, really, doctors handing out these drugs like candy, before their patients have even had regular heats. We can discuss this a year or two from now.”

Vera’s eyes narrowed. “You’re kidding.”

“No.” He shook his head. “As a general rule, I don’t prescribe suppressants to anyone under 15. Over 16 is preferable.”

That was two, three years away. At least two years of this happening. No, Otabek reminded himself. This was just a hint of what he’d have to go through for those two or three years.

Gulmira’s eyes went from Otabek to Dr. Bayzhanov and back, like she was in a desperate search. “I’ve heard about low-dose variants — can’t you give him those?”

“Mrs. Altin, you are a dentist, yes?” he asked, the barest amount of inflection transforming it from a statement to a question. In the pause that followed, Gulmira nodded. “Well, this is my field of expertise. You should stick to yours.”

Vera muttered something beneath her breath, unintelligible but hostile in its tone.

“S-So,” Otabek said weakly, “without suppressants I... I can’t compete, then?”

“Otabek,” Dr. Bayzhanov said gravely, “if you wish to continue skating, I’d advise you take it up as a hobby. Your body is not suited for serious athletics.”

He was frozen still, tears as hot as burning coals streaking down his face without him making a noise. He could barely feel Gulmira’s embrace, tight as it was.

“How dare you,” spat Vera, her voice so acidic it could penetrate the muffling numbness that was suffocating Otabek. “How _fucking_ dare you.”

Dr. Bayzhanov’s expression remained unchanged. “Mrs. Volkova-Altin, I am only being realistic—”

“Go to hell, asshole,” said Vera. “And take your backwards _bullshit_ about what my son can’t do there with you.”

“Verusha,” said Gulmira, softly but loud enough to get her wife’s attention.

“We’re done here,” Vera stated with every ounce of finality she could inject into her words, taking Otabek’s hand and leading him and Gulmira out the door, her steps loud on the tiled floor. Otabek followed, simply drifting, not knowing what else to do in the moment but be led.

The ride home was heavy with silence from without and within, Otabek’s mind overwhelmed into blankness, like a blown fuse. He stayed in that silence as he retreated to his room, back into his bed. Except to see if he wanted meals or their company, his moms let him be, leaving him to process or mope or seethe or do whatever he was supposed to be doing after being told to give up on the thing he loved so much and trained so hard for out of that love.

It was an odd, singularly unpleasant experience, knowing he had more than enough reason to sob and scream but not being able to do anything more than lay there.

And that's just what he did, for hours straight, not quite awake, not quite asleep, numb, but not numb enough as he would have liked. He hated that he was conscious enough to know what he must have looked like, overdramatic, drowning in woe-is-me self-pity. People were starving. People were _actually_ sick. It wasn't a big deal that he was told he just couldn't figure skate competitively anymore. That his body was better suited for other things...

It was absolutely a big deal. But the more he tried to convince himself it wasn't, the less it would hurt. He assumed. It hadn't started working yet.

Time passed. Night passed. He knew he should have been hungry, not eating anything the night before and throwing up everything he ate before that, but he didn't want to eat. It wasn't a "what's the point" kind of absence of hunger, just... an absence, simply. But his body hadn’t shut down completely, as much as it felt like it. It was probably three in the morning when his bladder compelled him out of his bed and down the hallway. On his sluggish trip back, he almost missed what was in his peripheral vision. His mothers were seated next to each other on the couch, both with tired eyes and tired faces, Vera with her forehead against her wife’s shoulder, Gulmira with her hands around one of Vera’s, settled on her thigh. Their mouths moved slowly, forming hushed words that Otabek could not hear. He felt intrusive, like he was stealing into a moment that he was not supposed to be part of, but something kept his feet firm on the floor, attached to the scene. He didn’t move, not even when they noticed him.

“Bekam,” Gulmira said softly, like she was faced with an animal she didn’t want to startle away. “Habibi, what are you doing awake?”

Good question. He just shrugged. Otabek didn’t have a good answer.

“Do you want to come sit with us?”

That same worried expression she always used to compel him to do things appeared on her face, her brow and lips frowning alike. She wasn’t forcing it or exaggerating it, Otabek could tell, but it still worked all the same. He walked over to the couch, seating himself down in the space they made for him between them.

“This must be hard for you," Vera told him, brushing his hair away from his brow. "If you need some time off from school, even when you start to feel better, you don't have to worry about that, okay?"

He knew it was serious if Vera, who would most definitely ground him for weeks if he ever skipped class, was fine with him staying home. He already knew this was serious, but this was what really hit it home for him. It took him out of his numbness, made him feel again. And he hated the way he felt.

“I’m sorry,” he choked out, eyes already burnt red with tears growing wet yet again. “I'm so sorry."

"No, habibi," Gulmira said with a quiet gasp, wrapping her boy in her arms and holding him close, letting his tears fall on the soft fabric of her terrycloth robe. "You don't have to apologize. There's nothing to apologize for."

"I know how much money you spent," said Otabek, running through the long list of expenses he put them through for his dream, the custom boots and blades, the lessons, the private coaching, the off-rink training, the costumes for his competitions thus far, the vague but incomprehensibly large amount making his chest constrict itself. "I wasted it all. I'm sorry, sorry, sorry."

"Never worry about that," Vera tried to calm him, a hand on his shoulder, heaving through his sobs. "You're our son. You don't owe us anything. And besides, you don't have to give up skating."

"Yes, I do," Otabek sobbed. "Doctor said so.”

Vera sighed, a shaky pain in her voice. "Doctors aren't always right, zhanym. Lots of omegas take suppressants, and they live day by day just like everyone else.”

“But he won’t even let me have them.”

“Then we’ll find you a doctor who will.”

"I'm not stupid," snapped Otabek, the anger in his voice muffled by the well of tears still falling, making his nose runny and his throat thick. "I know it doesn’t matter. I know what omegas do, just... j-just find an alpha and have babies, that’s all they do," he stuttered. “How’m I supposed to...”

"Otabek," Vera said firmly, but still kindly. "Look at me, please."

He didn't want to show her his face, streaked with tears and now with snot, but still moved away from Gulmira's shoulder, turning enough to see Vera in his peripheral vision.

"You can do whatever you want," she said. "It doesn't matter if you're an alpha, beta, omega... you don't have to have children just because you can. Nobody can make you."

"Vera's right," Gulmira said softly. "Maybe it was like that in the past, but it's not anymore. A lot has changed.”

“Yeah, right,” Otabek hiccuped. “You’re not omegas. What do you know?”

He’s always had such a good relationship with his parents. His bitter hostility towards them in that moment sounded so unfamiliar to him, so foreign. But how else was he supposed to react, with an alpha and a beta telling him what being an omega was like? They could say all the nice things they wanted, but that didn’t erase the classmate he saw taunted over being an omega, told to go find an alpha to bend over for. Did they even know what they were saying? Was that kid even an omega? Did it matter? And here’s what Otabek would get for trying to stand up for that kid and make the bullies stop; they’d just have more ammo when they found out he’s an omega too.

"You know, when I was your age, I would have given anything to be in your shoes," Gulmira said in a hush, smoothing her fingers through Otabek’s hair. "I'd wanted to carry a baby of my own since I was a little girl."

Otabek couldn't possibly see why. The whole thing seemed gross and painful and awful. He learned about tapeworms in science once, in a class on parasites, in the same week that a school nurse came to tell a snickering horde of adolescents about puberty, sex, and pregnancy. Otabek found the parallels easy to draw, and unsettling to dwell on.

But this was his life from that point on, he figured. Get swiped up by some alpha, then parasite after parasite after parasite…

“But then I found out I was an alpha,” Gulmira continued, interrupting his thoughts, “and that I would never have that. And it hurt. Maybe it hurt a little like how you hurt right now. But, you know, in the end, things worked out. I have your mama. And I have you, habibi. And we’re going to fight for you, no matter how hard we have to. I wouldn’t change a thing.

“God doesn’t always make us the way we want to be, but that doesn’t mean we were made wrong.”

Something about that stuck with him, even if it was far from erasing all the hurt, even if he didn’t really believe the sentiment, even if he wasn’t sure if he really believed in God. Something about it, hearing it in the voice that’s been comforting him his entire life, in a voice that sounded how a soft kiss on his forehead felt, made it stick with him.

“She’s right,” Vera added, “even if some people, certain doctors even, think otherwise.”

Gulmira made a soft noise, a little, bittersweet “mm-hmm.” But Otabek just stared wide-eyed at Vera, one thing on his mind overshadowing every other thought.

“You swore at him,” said Otabek, an awe in his voice at the recollection. He had never heard Vera swear, not even when she slammed her toe into a table leg. Otabek had been sent to the corner after doing just that, after she made sure his foot was okay, anyway.

“Yes, I did,” Vera said simply, “and I still don’t want you swearing.” She looked off to the side, quietly adding, “Unless they deserve it...”

“He deserved it,” Gulmira chimed in, “He was an asshole.”

“Ah, Gulya—”

“Yeah.” Otabek suddenly found himself grinning. “What an asshole.”

Vera’s scandalized, ready-to-dole-out-some-discipline look softened when she saw Otabek, puffy-eyed and red-faced, but smiling. She sighed quietly in defeat, but in a defeat that she didn’t seem too sorry to accept. “Well, have we got that all out of our systems now?”

“I think we’re letting him off easy, honestly,” huffed Gulmira. “You have a _lot_ more to say about him, don’t you, Vera?”

“Well... of course I do.” Vera cleared her throat, a tinge of pink highly visible in her light-skinned cheeks. She looked more the guilty pupil about to be sent to the principal’s office rather than the one with the power to do the sending.

The laugh Otabek tried to hold back turned into a choked gurgle in his throat, a sound in itself so bizarre-sounding that laughter immediately started pouring out of his open mouth.

Wise, compassionate words were the little push that convinced him that his world wasn’t completely collapsing in on itself. Swear words were what made that unsteady argument a bit sturdier. If his parents were cussing Dr. Bayzhanov out, if they were letting their son cuss him out, maybe he didn’t have all the answers anyway.

 

A couple days later, his parents took him to a new doctor, Dr. Serikova, a tall, younger woman who seemed to actually want an answer when she asked how you were doing, Otabek thought. He spent a whole hour with her, listening, asking questions, being listened to in turn. She did not mince words, though she was kind as she spoke them. Her sympathy was genuine, neither cloying nor overdone. She told him about realities, myths, decisions, studies, options he didn’t know he had. She welcomed his worries and fears openly, never pressing him to talk, though Otabek found himself talking anyway.

She was an omega, too.

“They said I’d never make it through med school, how would I study or go through a residency if I was in heat all the time?” An exhausted sigh passed through her pursed lips as she shook her head. Then she looked back at Otabek, an almost sly smile on her face. “Well,” she said, “here I am now. So how about we find something that’ll help you out, okay?”

A week later, inhaling chilled air deeply into his lungs, Otabek stepped back onto the ice.

And a year later, at a regular checkup with Dr. Serikova, he proudly showed her the gold he’d taken at Junior Nationals.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this doesn't hurt you all as bad as the last chapter did. (　ﾟдﾟ) The next few might though...
> 
> ...
> 
> Aren't we all having fun!?


	6. Chapter 6

In the final stretch of September, on an overcast evening, Yuri arrives at Otabek’s apartment with his backpack, a large, open energy drink in his hand, and a casual “Hey, Beka” on his lips, like he’d just happened to be in the neighbourhood and decided to stop by.

“I’d offer you a drink,” says Otabek, shutting his front door as his eyes following Yuri on his beeline for the couch. “But you’re good, I guess?”

“Yup,” Yuri replies, taking a long gulp from the tall, shiny, mostly neon green can. He puts it down on the coffee table. “I brought food, though.”

Otabek doesn’t even have to guess, but when Yuri pulls a plastic bag out of his backpack, and then a big paper bag out from the plastic, parts of the paper stained through with grease, he knows his guess is right. Yuri always travels light for these little trips, just the basics: a change of clothes, toothbrush, phone, enough piroshki to last the weekend. Bare necessities.

Otabek gratefully takes one of those piroshki when it’s offered, settling down in the opposite end of the couch. He takes a bite. They’ve obviously turned cold in the journey from Yuri’s kitchen to Otabek’s apartment, but they taste good all the same, that blend of crisp, greasy exterior and soft, chewy interior, then that simple filling that’s unchallenging to a child’s palate and nostalgic for an adult’s, even if the particular food didn’t have a real presence in Otabek’s childhood. But eating these reminds him of the puffy little baursaki he’d gorge himself on every special occasion his moms would make them on. Birthdays. Family weddings. His intermittent homecomings from overseas...

He’s not all that hungry, but he finishes his piroshok quickly. Then he asks for another one, which Yuri proudly supplies. His body will thank him for the calories later, at least.

They talk between mouthfuls (or, in Yuri’s case, during mouthfuls) of piroshki, hopping from one topic to the next as their whims (mostly Yuri’s, but Otabek doesn’t mind), touching on their programs for the season, Otabek’s music and gigs, Yakov’s partial retirement and Victor Nikiforov’s post as coach for both Yuris now. Yuri had plenty to say about that, definitely, but, from the videos Otabek’s seen of Yuri’s practice sessions, his new coach has really helped him refine his strengths, smooth out his rough edges, and really bring his skating to a level that could very well earn him gold at Pyeongchang in the coming year. Yuri’s probably aware of this, on some level. He’s definitely not cussing out Victor as much as before. And all his remaining complaining sounds appreciative, somehow.

It’s almost normal, just blabbing and bitching about their lives, laughing and cringing about it all. It’s nice. It’s not what Yuri’s travelled so far for.

Eventually, once they’ve had their fill, they share a knowing look. Yuri’s lips purse for a second, then he nods. Otabek picks up the remote, turns his TV on, changes the settings.

"What do you want to watch?" he asks, scrolling through Netflix for anything that catches Yuri’s eye.

"Doesn't matter to me," Yuri says with a shrug. "You pick."

It doesn't matter much to Otabek either. Whatever they watch is just a distraction. Background noise. He only deliberates for a moment longer before deciding on an action movie, something flashy and explosive. Something that should be full of eye-catching, ear-filling distractions.

Then he moves right to Yuri’s side, rests his head on Yuri’s shoulder, and keeps his nose close to Yuri’s neck. His first deep breath of Yuri’s scent is enough to make his heart beat faster, the rush dizzying him for a second. The feeling passes, for now.

The movie or show or whatever they watch is supposed to make this less awkward. It's something to keep the conscious part of the brain focused on a narrative, instead of the fact that Otabek is basically huffing his best friend and respected rival's pheromones until they get the message to his body: "Alpha present. Must breed. _Now._ " The reality is that nothing can really take the awkwardness away from this situation. Or, if there is such a thing, neither Otabek nor Yuri have come across it.

But, with each minute and movie scene and chest full of scent-laden air, little by little, Otabek cares less about how uncomfortable this arrangement between friends is. He gets comfortable with it, real comfortable, real fast. The plot of the movie hasn't even been completely set up and he's already having some difficulty paying attention to it. He's still calm and lucid, it's just that his thoughts are starting to get fuzzy on their edges, like a vignetted photo, softly drawing his focus inward. Despite some misconceptions, just being around an alpha doesn't immediately send a receptive omega spiralling into a hormonal frenzy. It's more gradual than that, much subtler and sneakier, the way it chips away at your self-control piece by piece. Like the frog in boiling water, except it’s not made up.

The movie continues, something about high-stakes heists, that kind of thing. There's been a betrayal in the team. Tensions are rising high. Otabek is getting antsy in his seat, not at all from the movie.

"Oof," is Yuri’s response to a car flipping over during an action-packed chase, some impressive Foley work making the resulting metallic crunch superbly disconcerting.

But, by this point, whatever’s going on on the screen barely registers for Otabek. Hungrier for warmth, he's inched closer, filling in what little space there was between them. Yuri, always so accommodating, has his arm thrown onto the back of the couch, out of the way so that Otabek can get closer. Or so that Otabek doesn't make his arm go numb trying to get closer. The end result is the same either way, with Otabek’s body all pleasantly tingly for the proximity.

Then, before long, his body can't be satisfied by an alpha's drifting scent or their passive touch. That whole body fuzziness starts to focus itself, set the nerves below his belly all alight, make him really start squirming for more. He nuzzles against Yuri’s neck, his shame a distant memory now, as his fingers inch onto Yuri’s thigh, creeping towards what has, in the space of an hour or two, has become all he wants and could ever possibly want.

It's hard not to notice, he imagines.

"Wanna go?" says Yuri, his voice making the hairs on Otabek’s arms stand straight up.

"Mm-hmm," Otabek mumbles into Yuri’s shoulder, trying even to keep his face buried there as they stand up together, and hurry along to Otabek’s bedroom, where everything is prepared, as always.

Then, as always, Yuri fucks him, again and again, as much as Otabek wants, as much as he needs. And it feels so insanely _good_ , sometimes so much it makes him sob in pleasure. Yuri is so good to him, so attentive, so perfect for him. As the pleasure keeps coming, over the course of hours, through a bounty of thrusts and moans and raucous climaxes, his mind grows obsessed with this heat being fruitful. Even as he becomes tired and sore, his hormones flood his brain with images of his belly growing large with a child. A good, strong alpha's child. Yuri Plisetsky’s child. How wonderful it’d be, how perfect.

As much as he despises himself for it later, when he's this deep in his heat, the thought brings almost as much pleasure as the act that should bring it about.

Then, eventually, it ends.

And it’s not like that time he got anaesthetized to get his wisdom teeth extracted, waking up groggy and confused and with sore gums that had two fewer teeth in them, but no memory of the whole ordeal. He can remember this. It gets fuzzy, the individual moments of them get all jumbled together, but Otabek remembers it.

He remembers his thoughts, his desires. Just as they can bring him a greater joy than the sex itself, they leave him guiltier in the end. More ashamed. Shaken. He’s using his friend for a baby. A baby that doesn’t exist, won’t exist, but still. The distinction makes little difference to Otabek.  
But he gets over it, because he has to get over it. It’s not going to stop. But at least it’s stopped for now. He’s earned another month of freedom.

Well, that’s how it always works, anyway.

But something’s different this time.

In the deep, dead sleep that always follows his heats spent with Yuri, Otabek wakes up, the dark blue before sunrise outside his window, hinting at the few hours that have passed since he had fallen asleep. He’s muddled at first, the way you’d be after someone shakes you out of a settled sleep, not really sure where you are, what’s going on, if you’re even awake or still asleep.

He tries to turn over, ready to let sleep overtake him once more, but he quickly realizes that will not be happening. Something is wrong. The startled rush of adrenaline shocks him awake like a blow to the back of the head.

Apprehensively, he slips a hand underneath his blanket and down his backside, feeling a sharp twinge in his chest when he feels between his thighs. It’s soaking wet, and warm. Not the cooled remnants of earlier. Fresh slick.

_How?_

A bad dream, maybe? His brain playing a cruel joke on him? A mistake, it’s surely some kind of mistake.

But still his fingers find their way inside him all on their own, almost as if urged by a force outside of himself, needing to find relief whether this is all real or not. There is only an oblivious moment before he knows that this will not do, that his fingers are neither long nor thick enough for more than little incidental brushes of pleasure. Oh, he knows what he needs, what he wants…

No, there's still a way he can deal with this himself. There is, he hopes.

He digs through his dresser drawers, tossing aside everything in his way, before he finds it at the bottom of his bottommost drawer, where it has stayed for a year now, undisturbed, unneeded. He swipes up his dildo, a dark blue, firm, simple thing he got online for cheap after the brutal return of his heats made it a necessity. Aching bad for it after the absence of his fingers, insufficient as they were, he wastes no time shoving it inside him. He takes it without resistance, his hole as wet as it inexplicably is, and still stretched out from the pounding after pounding Yuri gave to him earlier. Yuri’s bigger than this thing, anyway.

No, stop thinking about Yuri. Yuri has done enough. This is good. This will do. Otabek doesn't think about Yuri as he pumps this counterfeit phallus up his ass, doesn't think about Yuri as the wet squelch of his self-penetration fills his ears, doesn't think about Yuri as he twists and squirms to try to get it to feel the same way as when it’s Yuri.

But, no, it's just not the same. It's just not enough anymore. His body can no longer be satisfied with silicone after having the real deal so many times. After feeling the heat of a flesh and blood cock in him, after being filled the wonderful warmth of an alpha's seed…

He pulls the dildo out, tosses it aside. He might as well dump it in the trash for what it's worth to him, but he's already stumbling out of his bedroom without a scrap of clothing on him, carrying himself quick to the living room, to the only thing that can help him.

Yuri’s scent hits him hard when Otabek’s standing in front of him. He’s shaking, so overcome with chemical lust that he feels like he could literally explode from it, but he keeps himself in control, as much as he can. He pushes Yuri’s shoulder, more forcefully than he had meant to, more desperately.

Yuri gets roused from his sleep after a little prodding, though it’s with a drowsy thickness in his voice that he says, “Beka?” He blinks a few times, rubs his eyes with his knuckle. “Shit, what time’s it?”

“Yuri,” is all Otabek can manage to say back, the word needy on his dry lips.

Yuri’s eyes open wider now, something dawning on him, though his upticked brow shows he’s not sure what that is, exactly. “What’s wrong?”

The breath Otabek takes in to try and centre himself is a trembling one, cut short of the deep, calming one he meant it to be. It fills his nose with Yuri’s scent, and the noise that subsequently escapes his throat is a low, genuine whimper. It is not a sound Otabek makes of his own volition. Yuri, even half-asleep, knows this.

“Are you… in heat?”

“I-I don’t know,” he mutters, the little space between them, the emptiness that isn’t being filled, making his uncertainty less uncertain. “It feels like… but I already,” he feels hot tears in his eyes, “fuck, _fuck_.”

“Hey, hey, don’t panic,” says Yuri, an understated panic in his voice, one he’s trying and partially succeeding at keeping under control. “It’s okay. You’re okay.”

Yuri takes hold of Otabek’s wrist, keeping it in a gentle grasp. The light pressure of it, the human warmth, grounds him in the moment, while it’s not enough to even still him, draws his mind away from its frantic reeling of _why, why, why is this happening?_ He doesn't know what this is, he doesn't know why the hell it's happening, but every part of his mind and body alike know what he needs to do about it right in this moment.

"Can we?” His eyes wander to the pale skin between the hem Yuri’s rumpled shirt and the waistband of his sweatpants, wandering further. He can feel himself sweating, choking underneath this unbearable, feverish heat. “Please?”

“Yeah.” Yuri nods, starting to get up. “Yeah, uh, I’ll just get myself hard...”

No time. Can’t wait anymore. Otabek is on the ground so fast he gets a flicker of wooziness from the sensation of falling, his knees taking the brunt of his impact with the hard floor, discomforts that he registers but easily ignores. The trembling in his hands makes him clumsy, but, luckily for him, dexterity isn’t all that necessary for yanking Yuri’s pants below his hips, exposing his soft cock. Mostly soft.

Like a crazed animal swooping down on its prey, Otabek’s wraps his lips around Yuri’s limp cock, fitting the whole of it easily in his mouth. He sucks and licks frantically, no rhythm to his motions, no pattern. He has no idea what he’s doing. He’s seen plenty of people get sucked off in porn, but he’s never actually _done_ it before, and he’s not exactly in the right state of mind to try things out slowly or experimentally — his sole focus is results. And, with the way his mouth is getting more crowded, and his tongue takes in the salty taste of pre-cum, he’s getting those results.

“Oh, fuck,” Yuri hisses, ragged, into his fist, his other hand squeezed tight around the couch cushion. If Otabek’s doing a bad job, Yuri sure as hell isn’t showing it.

It’s not long before his dick swells beyond the limits of Otabek’s mouth, and so he starts bobbing his head up and down, fingers around the root, nestled in coarse hairs, so he can keep Yuri’s dick steady as he repeatedly, voraciously feeds it in between his lips, as Yuri’s body quivers and his breath hitches. He's hard, but not as hard as he could be, not as hard as Otabek needs him to be.

Tears sting in Otabek’s eyes when he swallows Yuri’s length, at its full length, too hard and too fast, violently setting off his gag reflex and the primal panic that comes with it. He jerks his head back before hunching over to gasp for breath and cough.

"Oh Christ," Yuri sputters, quickly sitting up. "You okay?"

The worst of the fit passing, he opens his eyes, blinking rapidly to clear away the fog of moisture there. When his vision clears, he sees it, the fruit of his efforts, standing tall and solid, ready for the taking. Otabek doesn't hesitate, scrambling up onto the couch, his throat still seizing into coughs from the intrusion.

"Turn around," he says not as an order, but as a plea. When Yuri stays in place, not understanding, Otabek guides him by the hand, roughly and not just for the sake of being rough, until Yuri has his back against the couch’s back, fenced in by Otabek’s legs, as sturdy as jelly, on either side of Yuri’s thighs.

Otabek feels the feathery touch of hands at his hips, gone as soon as it arrives, before he drops himself down on Yuri’s cock, and all other sensations become meaningless.

There would be lots of ways to describe this feeling, if he had the faculties to do so. The weight of the moment is so tied to the moment itself, slipping away from the mind as the mind slips back. To try to capture the sensation in words, to recall it later in its fullness, is impossible, like trying to think of a food and summon its taste on your tongue. You can only use approximation, abstraction, metaphor. It’s often described as an end to a desperate deprivation, the first sip of water after a long thirst, the first mouthful of food after hunger, the cool breeze on sun-scorched skin. Otabek can see the parallels, can appreciate the resemblance to his reality, but, ultimately, they are too simplistic. He would liken it more to the way a powerful song can run chills through your spine, embed itself in your skin, blend with you, change you.

That's what it feels like, taking a cock up his dripping, greedy hole. There is nothing like it. Save for, perhaps, one thing.

"Come in me," Otabek begs, bouncing on Yuri’s lap with no heed for the burn of his already worn-out muscles. "Come in me, come in me, please, please, I want it, _please_."

The same thoughts, the same desires, the same words he'd never say except when his body is crazed like this. They conquer Otabek’s mind so viciously that it's not until he's had his fill, until he's fucked back to his senses, that he realizes that he had them again, in the same day his heat ended. Again. _Why again?_

He's slumped against Yuri, their bodies warm sticky with sweat, his forehead flush with Yuri’s shoulder. He's trying to catch his breath, but it's out of his reach, too swift and wild for him to keep steady in his lungs. Yuri’s scent fails to lull him as it should in the aftermath, or perhaps it does, but it’s just not enough to still the surging panic in him.

"Beka?" says Yuri. "Are you okay?"

He doesn't know. He doesn't fucking know.

And that _terrifies_ him.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey guys! Sorry for not updating last week. I ended up in the hospital that Saturday, and even though I was at home and feeling significantly better by Sunday, I didn't have it in me to get what I had ready to post. I'm definitely going to try to keep updating once a week, but we'll have to see what happens.
> 
> All that said, thank you all so much for the comments, and I hope you enjoyed this chapter! <3


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mental illness is a big ol' bitch but I'm still here updating my fanfic so suck my dick, depression.

**Hyperestrus** [hahy-per- **es** -truh s] noun, _pathology._ 1\. a condition in omegas characterized by prolonged and severe reproductive heats, mainly caused by an excessive or irregular production of the sex hormones that regulate the estrus cycle.

 

* * *

 

              “Good morning, Otabek,” says a familiar, warm voice, as its owner enters the room.

              “Dr. Serikova,” he responds with a nod.

              She closes the door behind her, sealing them and them alone in her examination room, before taking a seat on her wheeled, round stool and pushing her long, black ponytail over her shoulder. She has the usual manila folder, full of every intimate medical detail of Otabek’s life, now resting on her lap. Since he came here in early October, making an appointment as soon as that prolonged heat ended for good (not that he felt he could be entirely sure of that, anymore), that file looks markedly thicker. He could just be imagining that, though. That seems like one of the most trivial things the mountain of stress he’s been buried under could do to him.

              But just being in Dr. Serikova’s presence shears away some of the stress, even now.

              Ever since his parents set up his first appointment with her, back when he was thirteen and scrawny and terrified, Otabek has kept himself in Dr. Serikova’s care. He can’t really picture himself with any other doctor, at least for anything related to his being an omega. She was the one who started him on a careful suppressant regimen, having him come in frequently so she could monitor his growth and health, out of an abundance of caution against the potential side effects of taking suppressants during adolescence — ostensibly the reason why Dr. Bayzhanov refused to even let Otabek _try_ suppressing his heats. Otabek didn’t mind having to go to appointments every couple of weeks in that first year of him presenting; he knew it was a much better alternative than actually having the heats. Even besides that, it would have been hard to begrudge the manifold visits when they were to someone who, he thought, went above and beyond to give him a life that was healthy, safe, _normal —_ someone who, even when Otabek was off training in America and Canada, would willingly keep in contact with him at unorthodox hours over Skype to see how he was doing. And, as Raziya Serikova, rather than Dr. Serikova, cheer him on through competitions.

              She fixed Otabek’s life. That’s what he believed. And she hasn’t stopped trying to put it back together since it starting falling apart, since that one night in Barcelona...

              “I just want to go over your recent heats, for clarification,” she says, pulling out a page from the folder. “If that is all right with you, Otabek.”

              He nods. “It’s fine.” It’s not really, having to scratch back open wounds that have barely scarred, but Otabek can’t begrudge her doing so. He knows she wants to help. “What do you need to know?”

              “Let’s start in October...”

 

* * *

 

              It's October 24th, about 3:30 in the afternoon, after about 30 hours of either flying, hopping onto other planes, or being bored as hell during layovers, when Yuri Plisetsky, a gold medal from Skate America shoved into his carry-on, is woken up by a flight attendant with a "Sir? Excuse me, sir?" to tell him they've landed at Almaty International Airport.

              The Uber driver has to do the same, though without the formality, when he arrives at Otabek’s building.

              "Hey," the driver says as Yuri’s stepping out of the car. "Do I know you from somewhere?"

              "Maybe," Yuri says through a yawn, slamming the door shut.

              He buzzes in at the front door, rocking on the balls of his feet, trying to get the blood flowing in his half-asleep legs, still numb from all the sitting. After a moment passes without an answer, he presses the button for Otabek's apartment again, holding his finger down longer, not really caring if that will affect the outcome or not. More waiting, a little more stretching, another try, nothing. After going through a quick rundown of the possible reasons Otabek's not answering the door — sleeping, (possibly) dead, (a small chance) in the bathroom, (happens to everyone) not at home, (highly unlikely when he's at risk of going into heat) — Yuri dumps his bag on the ground and starts digging through it. After a little scrounging, he finds his keys, all linked together by what has to be the goofiest-looking, googly-eyed tiger keychain in existence, a little trinket Otabek found and picked up for Yuri from some airport or other's duty-free shop. Also from Otabek are two of the keys on the ring, one with a light blue cap, the other yellow. Throwing his bag back over his shoulder, Yuri slips the blue key into the front door's lock, jiggling it until it turns and clicks, then lets himself in.

              Giving Yuri a set of keys was Otabek's idea, a way for Yuri to, say, go out for some air after the heat and be able to get back in if Otabek's too bone-tired to even answer his phone. Buzzing in's more of a formality than anything, just to let Otabek know he's here, but not _quite_ here yet. Also, he can accept the practicality of having his friend's keys on him all the time, for this situation they're in together, but he knows there's an intimacy to having those keys that friends, just friends, don't have. He likes to avoid using them when he can, lest he starts giving himself the wrong idea about _why_ Otabek trusted Yuri with complete, continual access to his apartment.

              Because, honestly, if Yuri were just to show up totally out of the blue and waltz into Otabek's place to surprise him, he might be happy to see him, sure, but Yuri thinks he'd mostly be wondering why the hell he's suddenly there.

              He has to keep things in perspective. Realistic, shitty, we’re-not-actually-dating perspective.

              Yuri makes it up one flight of stairs before he gives up and takes the elevator up the rest of the way, then turns the correct corners of the carpeted hallways until he's at Otabek's door. He takes the yellow key ( _Gold, for Altin_ , he thinks) and enters.

              "Yo, Beka!" he hollers inside the apartment, shucking off his bag and shoes. "It's not a burglar, just me."

              In the time it takes him to take off his jacket and throw it onto the couch, ignoring the hooks by the entrance just as he would at home, he gets no response. It’s then that he starts to worry that something might be wrong.

              “Beka?” he calls out, taking a few steps further into the apartment, peeking into the kitchen. He pulls out his phone to check for any missed texts or calls, finding none, and he’s one touch away from calling Otabek when he hears the bedroom door open.

              Standing halfway behind a halfway-open door stands Otabek, on unsteady, bare legs, dressed only in a sweat-soaked white t-shirt. Beneath a sweaty brow, his piercing eyes watch Yuri, their presence so heavy it feels like they leave a tangible weight on Yuri’s chest.

              “You’re here,” says Otabek, his breath heavy, but with the lightness of relief in his voice. He bites into his lip, tightens his grip on the door like he’s trying to force himself to stay in place.

              Yuri realizes that that’s exactly what Otabek’s trying to do.

              “Oh fuck,” Yuri hisses, rushes over to Otabek. “How long’ve you been in heat?”

              He’s close enough to discern Otabek’s near-black eyes from their pitch-black pupils, close enough to see how blown those pupils are with lust. Otabek shakily shakes his head and shrugs his shoulders, answering with such a quiet “I don’t know” that’s he practically just mouthing the words.

              “Fuck, I’m sorry. I got here as fast as I could, the fucking plane to Moscow was delayed—”

              Otabek’s reins snap at that second, pushing his heated body up against Yuri’s, his fingernails digging into the back of Yuri’s shirt, his head on Yuri’s shoulder, turned so his uneven, warm breath is against Yuri’s neck. Otabek doesn’t want apologies or explanations. Right now, all he wants is Yuri. He makes that abundantly clear when he pulls Yuri into the bedroom, onto the bed, to fulfill that one, vital want.

 

              It’s the same deal as last time, hours of the usual waves of frantic desire and too-short restful lulls, then a few hours of sleep intruded upon by a violent, overwhelming resurgence, taking more out of the both of them than the rest of the heat together.

              As exhausted as he is, Yuri’s not going to bitch about it. Not when he gets to fly back to St. Petersburg and recover for his next competition weeks from now. Not when Otabek has to get on a flight to Canada _tomorrow_ for his first Grand Prix event of the circuit. With that in mind, Yuri has nothing to complain about. Less than nothing.

              It just isn’t fair. Otabek deserves better shots at the podium than this.

              And Yuri does what little he can to give him that better shot, leaving Otabek’s rest undisturbed, tiptoeing with feline silence around the apartment, keeping his earbuds in as he passes through his solitude out on the couch with his phone. It’d take a lot more than Yuri stomping around the floor or playing a cat video from the living room to wake up Otabek, but Yuri doesn’t want to risk it.

              And he knows how selfish it’d be to wake up Otabek to hang out, even just to laze around and chat and watch a movie or something, so goddamn selfish it’s making his chest seize with guilt. So he keeps scrolling through his SNS feeds, trying to distract himself from even thinking of doing that.

 

              “Hey,” says Yuri, nudging Otabek’s shoulder until his eyes blink slowly into wakefulness.

              “Yura?” mumbles Otabek, half-awake. “What time’s it?’

              “Four in the afternoon,” answers Yuri. Otabek’s been asleep all day, which is par for the course — save for it looking like he got exactly _zero_ rest in that time. “My Uber’s gonna be here soon.”

              “You got an Uber?” Otabek rubs his squinting eyes with the heel of his palm. “I could have taken you.”

              “Uh, no offence, Beka, but you kinda look like shit right now.”

              After a pause, one in which Otabek probably realizes how shit he _feels_ , he concedes with a shrug. “No offence taken.”

              “Hey, by the way, since I’m not gonna see you again until the Internationaux de France, ” Yuri begins, taking the small, brown envelope he had ready in his pocket out, holding it out to Otabek. “Happy birthday.”

              A smile sneaks onto the corner of Otabek’s lips. He sits himself up and takes the package, taking a look inside before slipping the meagre contents out into his palm. It’s a keychain, a googly-eyed black bear dangling off the ring. Otabek’s laugh is quiet but authentic, and Yuri’s glad for it. Shaves off some of the awkward guilt about giving Otabek a touristy trinket Yuri found pretty much at the last minute at the airport, after spending roughly the last month deciding what the hell is an appropriate birthday gift for your best friend who you also happen to be fucking.

              This works, apparently. Good to know.

              “See, now we match,” says Yuri, brandishing his own keys to illustrate, giving them a little shake to make the tiger’s eyes jiggle around. “So if you don’t put it on your keys, I’m gonna be pissed.”

              “I will, don’t worry,” Otabek assures him. He looks up from his gift, a warm smile momentarily masking all the exhaustion on the face. “Thanks, Yura.”

              Yuri simultaneously shrugs and dismissively waves his hand, instantly knowing that he’s trying way too hard to show that he doesn’t care.

              His phone buzzes in his pocket, a message from his Uber driver, no doubt.

              “Okay, get hydrated,” Yuri starts quickly, grabbing a nearby water bottle and practically throwing it to Otabek’s side. “Eat some snacks, get up and move around, get more sleep, eat a real dinner and text me when you’re getting up for your flight tomorrow because I’m going to blow up your phone until you answer me and prove that you’re actually freaking awake and going to the airport, okay?”

              Otabek nods. “All right.”

              “I wanna see you kicking ass in Canada tomorrow.”

              Yuri gets another smile for that, one that completely fails to hide all of Otabek’s tiredness.

              “I’ll do my best.”

 

* * *

 

              “I was exhausted for days, so I had to lower the difficulty of my program,” says Otabek, remembering with a string in his throat the double and single jumps that were meant to be triples, the quads that he didn’t even attempt, knowing his body could not carry them out. “I didn’t place, obviously.”

              “Heats can take a considerable toll on the body, and that toll becomes exponentially more severe the longer the heat lasts,” she says with a soft sympathy, an understanding that has to be, even to a smaller degree, personal. “I know it’s of little consolation to hear it from me, but what you did in spite of that was incredible.”

              Otabek nods, admitting to some truth in her words. He fought against his body. He fought damn hard. And he may have had a victory, in some way, but it was far from the victory he wanted. He doesn’t want to be good _for an omega._ He wants to be _good._

              “As for the next heat,” says Dr. Serikova, flipping over to another page in Otabek’s file. “It was a similar occurrence, in those two sorts of phases, yes? One more like what you’ve experienced in the past, and another, shorter but more intense?”

              Intense. That’s one way to put it.

 

* * *

 

              The 2017 Internationaux de France is set to take place from November 23rd to the 25th, smack dab in the middle of the red days on Otabek’s heat-tracking app. The event is also the only one both Yuri and Otabek are competing at, unless both of the make it to the final, of course. Hoping for the best, gambling on it, really, they both arrive in Grenoble on the 20th.

              “Don’t have too much fun!” Victor yells, waving before he follows Yuuri into a cab. He somehow caught wind of Yuri’s early arrival in France, and decided to use it as an excuse to drop everything, foist his coaching responsibilities off to someone else, and having an impromptu third (or fourth, or maybe fifth?) honeymoon with Katsudon.

              “Don’t have too much fun!” was the same line he got from Mila as he was leaving their apartment, paired with that sly, I-know-what-you’re-getting-up-to smile she seems to never get tired of sending his way.

              He rolled his eyes then, just like he’s rolling them now, because he knows to save his cussing out for people it actually intimidates. Sometimes he really has to wonder if the reasonably-priced, fairly roomy apartment in a good, convenient area was worth moving in with Mila can’t-keep-her-noise-in-her-own-business-and-never-brings-her-one-night-stands-to-hotels Babicheva.

              (It’s worth it, surprisingly. It really is.)

 

              As he waits in line at the hotel’s front desk with a bunch of chattering skaters, their coaches, and the odd reporter, he texts Otabek for his room number. After fumbling through his check-in in a mix of broken English and tossed-in French word, and after getting a reply from Otabek, Yuri declines a bellhop with what he thinks is a pretty decent-sounding _non, merci_ when the guy picks up his luggage to carry up to his room. Because, well, Yuri’s not going to the room he just picked up the keycard for, and it’s a situation he’d rather not, for obvious reasons, involve anyone else in.

              Stepping out of the elevator at what is ostensibly the wrong floor, the right floor being currently two floors beneath him, he finds the room marked with the number in Otabek’s text. In front of it, he looks from side to side to see if the coast is clear and, seeing that it is, raps his knuckles against the wood.

              A quick moment later, the door opens, and Yuri, still cautious about anyone catching a glimpse of this, bolts inside. He closes the door behind him by swiftly leaning his back up against it, turning the lock with a long exhale.

              “Yo.”

              Otabek smiles, one eyebrow raised.

              “Hey.”

 

              After doing a bare minimum of settling in, Yuri pulls aside the curtains, taking in the image of the city offered by Otabek’s hotel room window. The flowing Isère, the river that runs through the city, catches his eye first, before his attention is led across the water, behind the rows of idyllic buildings, to a great hill — or is it a mountain? — of sheer grey rock and sloping green, rising against a canvas of pale blue and soft clouds.

              It's romantic. Yuri doesn't know much about romance, but he knows for a fact that _this_ is the place for it.

              "Hey," he says, eyes still soaking up the French, Alpine scene. "We've only ever done it at your apartment before, huh? This is all new."

              There's no answer, not until Yuri turns to Otabek behind him, bent over the bed, scrounging through his open suitcase.

              "Yeah," Otabek says softly, his brow creased, "I guess so."

              Yuri mentally slaps himself in the face. What could he possibly have been trying to accomplish with that question besides making Otabek uncomfortable? _Hey, not to be weird or anything, just making completely sure that you’re aware that you’re getting dicked down in a different locale, a different continent even. France! So romantic and shit._

He turns back to the window and grumbles wordlessly beneath his breath before letting the curtains fall back in place, leaving a thin slit into the world outside.

              “Okay,” he says clearly, mentally forcing himself to leave that awkwardness behind, as he picks up his backpack, unzips it, and dumps its contents out on the bed, making a heap of colourful cardboard boxes and crinkly foil wrappers. “So, yeah, I basically cleared this little grocery store out of everything that looked like a carby mess, but my French is fucking _garbage_ so I have no idea what half of this stuff even is.” He picks up something at random, a chocolate bar with a twisty, cursive label. “Chocolat,” he reads, his pronunciation slipping to the similar Russian word, before continuing, voice unsure, with, “aux... nois...ettes? Noisettes.” He shrugs, tossing it back into the pile. “Chocolate something.”

              “You didn’t need to do this, Yura,” Otabek says in a hush.

              “S’no big deal, I mean, the snacks are _mine_ too.”

              “Not that,” he cuts back in, “I mean, this, all of this.” Yuri looks up from all the food to catch Otabek gesturing at the space around him. “Coming here early.”

              “We made these plans like a month ago,” Yuri reminds him. “I’d be a real dick if I didn’t show up.”

              He would be a _colossal_ dick if he didn’t show up. He can only imagine what Otabek was going through last month before Yuri arrived, spiralling into his heat alone, desperate and needy, wanting so bad and being tortured with not getting. And Yuri stops _trying_ to imagine Otabek going through that, because the thought of Otabek writhing in his bed waiting for Yuri is putting a searing heat in his face. Dwelling on the buzz of that image, even with all the self-hatred and shame Yuri definitely feels alongside it, has got to be the wind-up for throwing a wrench into the already rickety friendship machine they’ve got chugging along here.

              “You could be training, resting, sightseeing, instead of, well,” Otabek sighs, “being stuck here with me.”

              Arms loosely crossed, Otabek has his eyes looking off in the corner, looking uncomfortably like a dog who knows he’s done something wrong. _Shit,_ Yuri bites his tongue. He needs to defuse this situation in a way that both alleviates Otabek’s needless guilt and avoids letting on that, well, Yuri doesn’t mind doing this. _At all_.

              He must spend too long trying to figure out that delicate way of doing that, because Otabek adds, mortified, “What if it brings down your score, doing this right before competition?”

              “No, it’s cool, man,” blurts out Yuri, cutting his thoughts short in a desperate need for a response. “Really. If anything, it’ll just give the other competitors a chance.”

              No, _fuck_ , Otabek just looks worse now. Yuri chastises himself with a sharp _nice work, moron_ before rushing back to what’s important here.

              “Hey,” he says, cautious this time, stepping over to stand opposite Otabek. “Don’t worry about it, okay? You’re not forcing me to be here or anything. I want to be here.” He puts his hand on Otabek’s shoulder, close to the juncture of his neck, the action coming before the intent. When he catches himself, he moves to Otabek’s arm, trailing away from too much intimacy. “You’re kinda my only friend, Beka. You’re, like, important and shit to me.”

              Otabek, moved by his friend’s unparalleled eloquence, relaxes against Yuri’s touch.   Yuri didn’t magically wipe away all of Otabek’s unease with the situation, that’s clear to see, but, among his expression, marked with a contrite tension, he manages to lure out a small smile. A small, beautiful smile.

              “Thank you, Yura,” he tells him, in a small, beautiful voice. It makes Yuri pleasantly breathless.

              Is he falling in love? Maybe.

              Is falling in love part of the deal? Definitely not.

              “Nah,” says Yuri, shaking his head. “Forget about it.”

 

              When they’re tangled up in bed some hours later, Yuri’s too occupied with his work that he doesn’t notice the gradual change in Otabek’s behaviour until things haven’t merely turned to a different shade, but an entirely different colour on the spectrum. Even as their positions shift, Otabek keeps their bodies close together, arms around Yuri’s shoulders or waist, fingers at his nape, tangling up in his hair, face invariably returning to Yuri’s neck to soak up his scent. The heats have always broken down Otabek’s inhibitions, let his animal brain out of the cage and hand it the reins. Yuri’s used to that. But this? This is... clinginess. Attachment. Intimacy.

              It’s... more like how this would be with a mate, than just a convenient, agreed-upon fuck.

              His heart pounding so hard in his ears that it nearly drowns out the moans of his name into his shoulder, Yuri keeps grinding his tired hips, Otabek’s calves on his lower back a weight that pushes the start of each thrust, a reminder that the end may be in sight, but he cannot, absolutely cannot stop yet. Face to face, bodies pressed up so close to each other, Yuri can feel Otabek’s cock drag against his abdomen with each thrust, making the skin there slippery with warm, ample supply of pre-cum. Every now-familiar sensation paired with the decidedly unfamiliar way Otabek is clinging onto him and nuzzling against him is blending into something that feels so unimaginably _wonderful_ that Yuri can barely keep himself from blowing his load, much less blowing his freaking brains out.

              Then, as Yuri dials it back to pull himself away from the edge, Otabek backs away from Yuri’s neck, putting a warm hand against Yuri’s cheek and pushing him slightly away, to make them be genuinely face to face.

              “God, Yura,” he rasps, the shadow of a moan on his name, the eyes looking into his dark and hungry with lust.

              Yuri unconsciously gulps. “Yeah?”

              “Breed me.”

              And before Yuri’s overloaded-to-the-limits brain can process what would push it _well_ far beyond those limits, Otabek pulls him back down, smashing their lips together.

              Yuri comes at that _very_ instant, with a choked grunt further muffled by chapped, busy lips. Otabek’s legs squeeze tight around Yuri’s middle, with so much pressure it almost hurts, locking Yuri in place as he empties his throbbing cock inside Otabek — something he’s done over and over again before but it’s never been such a _rush._ Yuri’s not an idiot, he _knows_ what heats are for and what they make Otabek want, ultimately, but now’s really the first time that he can’t just brush away the fact that Otabek, at this moment, wants to get knocked up. No, nope, that’s still brushing a bit away. He wants _Yuri_ to knock him up. For fuck’s sake, he’s got Yuri in a death grip leglock just so he doesn’t waste a drop of the stuff that’ll let that happen. He’s too stunned from all of this to even really recognize that Otabek is kissing him, much less have the sense to kiss him back.

              Because this is the hottest fucking shit that Yuri goddamn Plisetsky’s ever experienced in his goddamn fucking life.

              And the memory of it is still fresh and raw a little later, when he’s in the shower, successfully rinsing off everything from the day but the _Yura, breed me_ that keeps intruding on his more innocuous, meandering thoughts like a raging drunk stumbling repeatedly into a quiet little get-together.

              If only he could wipe that clean off his brain, if only for Otabek’s sake. Things are always a bit awkward once Otabek comes to his senses, as Yuri, barely hanging onto his own while, tries to overcome that awkwardness while urging food and drink onto his friend like a babushka within a five-mile radius of a possibly hungry grandchild. Always awkward, sure, but they’ve learned to get through it, joke around, keep things light. Not this time. This time, Otabek looked positively _ashamed,_ in a way that Yuri had no idea how to handle.

              So he fled, here to the bathroom, with Otabek’s fevered words and Otabek’s sheer guilt on a loop in his brain, leaving him with a boner that he also has no idea how to handle.

              “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” he hisses at his own cock, squeezing his eyes shut so he doesn't have to witness it anymore. He just spent an entire day using his dick, he has _zero_ desire to do anything more with it for probably a week, at least.

              But, no matter how much he tries to kill his boner with forced, repugnant thoughts, there’s a tingle of excitement each time Otabek’s voice echoes in his skull or he can feel the phantom pressure of his desperate embrace, an electric spark that runs from the top of his spine, to the tips of his fingers and the soles of his feet and, yes, to his cock.

              He gives up, slumps his side against the tiled wall, and starts pumping his fist as the torrent of hot water streams over his tender muscles.

              Yuri tries to convince himself to not feel guilty about it, at least not _too_ guilty. It’s a hormonal, spur-of-the-moment thrill that doesn’t mean anything beyond what it is. It’s not like he’s some perverted freak with an impregnation kink. Or is he? No. NOPE. Well, even if Yuri is, and he’s sure he maybe isn’t, he still knows he doesn’t _really_ want it to happen, and he knows that Otabek _definitely_ doesn’t want it to happen, or else he wouldn’t be taking birth control. Yeah, that’s right —  he _is_ on birth control.

              So, whatever. Get turned on at the thought, feel shitty about it or not, at least Yuri knows it’s not happening outside of their heads.

 

* * *

 

              Otabek leaves out the part about begging to be bred. Not because he thinks it’s in his best interest to keep things from his physician, but because it doesn’t seem medically relevant. If she happens to ask if he demanded to be bred while pretty much drunk off his own hormones, he supposes he’d be obliged to tell the truth. If she doesn’t, well, it just must not be important, right?

              There are bigger things happening in his life right now, anyway. Like how he’s not going to the GPF this year. Things like that, leaving big voids.

              “Particularly strong heats can encourage,” Dr. Serikova stops herself, “well, _pretty much force_ more pair-bonding behaviour out of you. Kissing, for example,” she offers, honing in on the information Otabek, still with a good deal of discomfort, elected to share. “It’s all hormones, the little bastards.”

              There’s usually something quite cathartic about hearing an omega physician vent about the omega issues she’s familiar with inside and out, but venting isn’t helping Otabek anymore. He needs those issues _gone_.

              “I read about a new suppressant, though? Something stronger,” he says, clawing at his brain for the name. “Chlor... Chlora-something?”

              “Chlomadinone acetate?” she suggests.

              “That’s it.” Otabek nods, some hope building in him at hearing the drug’s name in her voice. “Could I try that?”

              The sympathetic look in her eyes does a thorough job of crushing that small hope. “Not unless you’re a lab rat in Germany, I’m afraid. I’ve heard of promising results, but it will be years before it’s on the market, if it ever makes it that far.”

              He gives a small nod that’s not quite a nod, his mouth a straight, controlled line. He should know better than that by now.

              “I’m sorry to say this,” she says, “but, at this point, if you don’t want to have heats, your options are limited. And drastic.”

              He doesn’t even give her statement the serious, dense pause that it probably calls for, instead immediately asking, “What are they?”

              “You could undergo an oophorectomy, that’s the surgical removal of the ovaries, and your body would not be able to produce the hormones required to go into heat,” she explains. “You would never go into heat again, the amount of pheromones you emit would drop significantly, and you would not be able to get pregnant.”

              That sounds wonderful. Freedom from his own body, a real measure of control over it. No more pills and needles, no more fears of heats or pregnancies, no more of his body violently overriding his brain... It sounds better than anything he could hope for. It sound too good to be true.

              “However,” Dr. Serikova goes on, because of course it _is_ too good to be true. Her professional tone even seems marked with regret for having to go on. “Due to the risks of the surgery, and the substantial, lifelong health complications that may follow it, I would be hesitant to refer you for the procedure unless your condition becomes life-threatening.”

              It may threaten his livelihood and the foundation of his life, but not his blood-and-air life itself. That is to say, taking the repercussions into account or not, it’s not on the table.

              “What else?”

              She is quiet for a moment, like she needs to steel herself for where she’ll bring this discussion. It is probably only for a few seconds, but for Otabek, each of those seconds drags out long beyond its natural lifespan. “Well,” she says at last, tapping her finger onto his file, her manicured nail singling out one test result out of the lot, “for the majority of individuals with hyperestrus, their hormonal levels tend to stabilize after carrying a pregnancy to term. They even start responding to suppressants that were ineffective before.”

              That’s one hell of a prescription: take a cock (and, hey, he’s already got a supply), wait nine months, then give her a call in the morning. Then he can skate again, but the pregnancy-busted body and, oh yeah, the _baby_ , that’s all his to keep.

              Some part of him almost wants to laugh, hearing this. He doesn’t, of course. It’s not a joke.

              “That’s not exactly an option, Serikova.”

              “I know,” she sighs. “But it’s about all I have left to offer you.”

              She takes out her pad of paper and jots something down, speaking as her pen glides against the page. “If you want the oophorectomy, you can start the process to demonstrate need for it. You’ll have to speak with several doctors, and at least one counsellor; surgeons would be reluctant to remove overall healthy organs, particularly when it would permanently sterilize an otherwise healthy 20-year-old. Getting the surgery approved could take years, a year, at least.” She tears off the page, handing it out for Otabek to take. “At the very least, it will give you time to think this over.”

              He looks over the note, a mishmash of names and websites and contacts. A bunch of faceless people who will decide if he has the right to choose what’s best for his own body.

              “I wish I could do more, Otabek.”

              He shakes his head as he crisply folds the paper over.     

              “No, I know you’ve done all you could. Thank you.”

 

* * *

 

_me [12:35]: hey we didn’t make plans for the next one_

_me [12:36]: it’s like around dec 20, right?_

_me [12:36]: i’m pretty free so that’s cool_

_Beka [12:36]: About that, Yura_

_me [12:37]:i can even stay longer, if you’re up to it_

_me: [12:37]: you got so much Kazakhstan left to show me_

_Beka [12:37]: We have to stop doing this_

**Author's Note:**

> I've literally wanted to write this since I started working on This Man is Mine, so took just over a year to a) convince myself to write it. b) get others to convince me to write it. c) plan it. d) actually write some of the goddamn thing.
> 
> And here's the result. I'm going to try making shorter chapters, so maybe the updates will be more frequent? (maybe??? who knows???)
> 
> It may be self-indulgent mpreg trash, but it's still my baby. I hope you enjoy. <3


End file.
